MARLOW, England, October 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — SAS and DigitalRoute, two leading AI and data management companies, have joined forces to provide 5G Network Data Analytics (NWDAF). The combined solution is an alternative to black-boxed or hard-coded Network Equipment Vendor (NEP) solutions. This will enable Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to use NWDAF to go beyond addressing defined use cases that primarily focus on network operations and eliminate the network provider silo trap.
Data-driven networks offer a new opportunity for CSPs to link network services to business operations, bringing the industry into a new digital chapter for B2B services, with new revenue streams. However, modern networks have become so complex that it is difficult to scale efficient operations, which dictates that they take advantage AI and automation, and enable new monetization opportunities, such as Analytics-as-a-Service.
CSP data has value beyond network operations, which means that NWDAF can be part of broader data analytics and democratization strategy. Now everyone in an organization can start working comfortably with data and AI tools, regardless of their technical know-how. This can drive data-informed decisions across the business and help create data-powered customer experiences.
“It is important that the NWDAF, in addition to aligning with the 3GPP specifications, comes with a set of common and reusable platform services such as APIs and AI platform components that enable ongoing lifecycle management of all AI models running on it.These components may be consumed by additional use cases, beyond those defined and standardized by 3GPP,” explained Adaora Okeleke, analyst Principal of Data, AI and Cloud Developer Tools and Platform Services at Analysys Mason “Several opportunities for monetizing the 5G network lie in the B2B realm and to access them, the NWDAF will need to be part of the broader advanced analytics ecosystem of a CSP, providing key data and intelligent insights that will enable the discovery and management of new 5G enterprise use cases.
“SAS and DigitalRoute are pioneers and experts in our respective fields, with extensive experience in building revenue and operational solutions for telecommunications that now include NWDAF and automated operations,” said Sasa Crnojevic, Network AI & Machine Learning Business Principal, at SAS. “We understand the value and difference that a flexible, vendor-neutral, and easily configurable low-code/no-code solution brings to the bottom line and how it supports the democratization of data and AI across the enterprise. ”
The NWDAF architecture supports this approach due to two major components, data management and analytics services, which when disaggregated means the NWDAF can coexist with the data analytics architecture. end-to-end of a business. Therefore, communications service providers can benefit in a number of ways, including:
- Reduced total cost of ownership and the time required to integrate with the NWDAF, thanks to the reuse of pre-existing analysis components.
- Faster innovation cycles and time to market through less reliance on costly change-of-supplier requests or complex product upgrades.
- Activation service agility through coexistence with 2G/3G/4G ML network operations.
- Improved information through the elimination of data silos (by separating the data collection layer, the same information can be used to support other analysis cases or applications).
- Increase in B2B opportunities by combining with analytics functions beyond the network (e.g. banking, healthcare, manufacturing, IoT, and edge computing).
“Networks have always carried huge amounts of valuable data, and until now, due to advances in machine learning and data science, it was not possible for telecommunications providers to use this data to improve their business offerings,” said Demed L’Her, CTO of DigitalRoute. . “DigitalRoute has always been the gold standard for large-scale data mining and processing. Likewise, SAS has set the standard for extracting insights from oceans of data. This combination is a perfect combination of two technology giants. technology, each an expert in their field; both focused on NWDAF and its possibilities.”
New monetization opportunities will arise for CSPs with NWDAF. For example, in the manufacturing industry Volvo trucks and Mack Trucks have, by processing truck sensor data, maximized vehicle uptime and minimized downtime costs by reducing diagnostic time by 70% and repair time by 25%. Benefits like these are something CSPs can enable with NWDAF and this will in turn generate new revenue opportunities by selling more advanced, value-based services beyond simple connectivity.
SAS SOURCE; DigitalRoute