The ZSM Forum @ Layer 123 SDN NFV World Congress 2018 sparked great interest. The importance of the ZSM work, its objectives and approach were once again supported during the highly successful and well-attended forum.
The third ETSI ZSM (Zero touch network and Service Management) forum was hosted by Layer123 at the well-attended SDN NFV World Congress 2018 that took place on October 8, 2018 in The Hague, Netherlands. This year the congress focused on three primary themes relating to ZSM: technology (e.g. cloud native NFV, SDN, security), automation (e.g. zero touch, artificial intelligence, programmable cloud) and business (e.g. 5G, service transformation, use cases).
Klaus Martiny (DT), the ZSM Chair, opened with welcome notes. Klaus reminded the audience that a year ago at the same congress he shared the plan for multiple companies to set up a new initiative, focusing on end-to-end service and network automation, that will address the complexity (in terms of network management) created by the technology evolution. Since then, ETSI was selected as the umbrella for the new initiative and the new Industry Specification Group (ISG) was formed in December 2017. The first meeting of the new ISG took place in January 2018. The ISG has made great progress with the work and is well positioned to facilitate collaboration with relevant open-source projects, standardization bodies and fora to help the industry move to an environment that leverages synergies and achieves alignment through convergence on a single end-to-end network and service management architecture. Cooperation and alignment across the industry are essential to promote the adoption of and alignment with the ZSM architecture and solutions as well as to achieve automated end-to-end network and service management. The ISG ZSM intends to hold an open dialogue with the related organizations and open-source projects so as to encourage mutual convergence. Klaus highlighted the importance of providing early implementations and Proofs of Concepts (PoCs) that can validate the specifications and inject input into the specification work. To this end, he invited the industry players to demonstrate PoCs.
Nurit Sprecher (Nokia), the ZSM Vice Chair, presented (see presentation in ZSM Open Area) the drivers and triggers for full end-to-end automation of network and service management, the rationale for the formation of the new ISG and its goals as well as the work program and status. Currently, the ZSM group includes 59 members/participants of whom 18 are operators.
Nurit also highlighted the important role of PoCs in demonstrating the viability of the ZSM implementations and she invited the different players to join the ZSM PoC projects. The ZSM PoCs are multi-party projects in which network/service providers, suppliers, universities, research centers, open-source projects, integrators and others can participate. The results and lessons learned from the PoCs will be channeled to the ZSM specification work. Nurit pointed to the first ZSM PoC, ServoCloud (see ZSM Wiki) that aims to demonstrate efficient lifecycle and element management automation at scale, and she invited the audience to examine the PoC which was presented during the congress. Nurit concluded that we have just embarked on an exciting journey towards the automation transformation that will help operators to meet user expectations for service agility and create new business opportunities. Moreover, she emphasized that the ISG intends to drive a highly focused and agile industry effort involving key players spanning the breadth of the ecosystem. The ISG is open to both ETSI members and non-ETSI members. The different players in the value chain are welcome to join the ISG effort, contribute to the development of the specifications and demonstrate PoCs.
Diego Lopez (Telefonica), one of the founders of the ISG ZSM, presented the ZSM scenarios and key requirements which are based on the current content of ETSI Group Specification (GS) ZSM-001. The ZSM scenarios are used to derive the requirements for an automated end-to-end network and service management in general, and to drive the design and specification of the ZSM architecture and solutions. ZSM-001 identifies business-oriented scenarios and related automation challenges faced by operators and vertical industries. The scenarios’ analyses derive architectural, functional and operational requirements. Currently there are 31 scenarios and more than 90 requirements. The ISG is working towards grouping related scenarios and consolidating the requirements. The intention is to outline the key areas for automation and zero-touch operation with the scenario groups and to demonstrate the value and applicability of the ZSM architecture and the management services for supporting future-proof scenarios, such as 5G network-slicing management as well as incremental evolution towards end-to-end automation and zero-touch. The presentation is available in the ZSM Open Area.