NFV Operations - DevOps Style – the BlueTC Value Proposition:
Background
The arrival of “software defined things” (IAAS, PAAS, SDN, NFV….) means a critical paradigm shift for operations teams in telco operators. Monolithic hardware based infrastructures become less relevant with control being delivered on top of virtualisation via software configuration. Software defined things are much more dynamic and flexible, which is undoubtedly a clear advantage but also a new complexity level for deployments and maintenance. This requires a big effort on monitoring, automation and orchestration if you want to keep the required control on your infrastructure. Operations teams must adjust to this new paradigm by adopting tools and methodologies more akin to agile software development, a heritage from DevOps.
The BlueTC Value Proposition:
Blue Telecom Consulting (BlueTC®) has vast experience in helping blue chip companies in telecoms that are leading this technological shift and assisting them in achieving their digital transformation objectives. Working on R&D test environments we have identified and solved the most complex issues that this digital transformation brings to service providers and technology vendors in telecoms.
BlueTC has developed competence and gained knowledge and experience in various areas:
1. - Infrastructure transformation consultancy
The initial phase of our collaboration with any organization requires a review and analysis of their current situation to identify needs and help them in creating a road map for strategic tools and methodologies adoption.
2. - DevOps transformation and change management
Considering DevOps transformation as being limited to certain departments and people within the organization is a common misnomer and mistake. BlueTC’s experience shows it is not enough to simply train the system admins in configuration management and automation tools or hiring a new DevOps expert team. A more fundamental mind set and culture needs fostering from the top down and can only be achieved through process and organisational change.
3. - Monitoring and analytics
Data collection and proper analytics are a necessity to be in a position to understand your infrastructure, characterise your products and secure your environment. Based on state of the art machine learning algorithms BlueTC has developed and integrated complex monitoring and analytics projects for several customers from traditional network monitoring to the Business Intelligence associated to NFV orchestration tools, including:
• protocol monitoring
• predictability
• intrusion detection
• anomaly detection
4. – From automation to "zero touch" infrastructure management
Once you have a clear understanding of the performance and status of your infrastructure, the next level of control you can implement and leverage is automation. Alerts and alarms which are raised can be processed to create and automatically deploy the configuration management scripts. Existing recipes can be programmed to execute automated corrective - and even preventive - actions. Such a procedure, along with the development of new recipes for unmanaged alert types, consolidates the first steps towards the "zero touch" infrastructure management that many companies aim at achieving.
