Infovista unveils NLA Cloud Platform
Author: Beatrice
Infovista has unveiled the NLA Cloud Platform, unifying network planning, testing and automated assurance and operations, products and solutions. Integrating data, workflows, and analytics across the network lifecycle and breaking the limitation of traditional siloed-solution approaches, the NLA Cloud Platform brings greater use case innovation, agility and interoperability for CSPs’ throughout and across their next-generation fixed and mobile networks.
The NLA Cloud Platform provides common telco-specific functions such as automation, analytics, and data correlation engines to power Infovista solutions across the entire network lifecycle. The platform extension builds on the deployment of the platform powering the Ativa Suite of applications for automated assurance and operation to now also include Planet AI-driven RF network planning and TEMS network testing solutions. This translates into efficiency and productivity gains by reducing the footprint of previously siloed architectures, streamlining operability, and reducing management overhead through a unified cloud native platform common to all Infovista solutions, which can be deployed independently or in combination on the NLA Cloud Platform.
The cloud-native architecture delivers a high level of openness thanks to a standard and extensible suite of adaptors and parsers for data collection from network nodes or other third-party systems. This enables the integration of multiple data sources – including probe data, call traces, OSS, drive test and third-party data sources such as crowdsourced data, EMS data and post-processed data from other assurance, planning and testing solutions – to be consolidated and correlated to provide in-depth information and actionable insights in a single pane of glass.
“Regardless of where an operator is in its journey to becoming cloud native or enabling 5G-SA, they want to know that they can easily and cost-effectively automate processes and extend the benefits of shared data and analytics across their network as and when they’re ready,” says Franco Messori, Chief Product Strategy and Transformation Officer, Infovista.
“To deliver CSPs multi-segment end-to-end visibility from infrastructure to subscriber, and the insight and control they need across their networks, services and experiences, the framework must be cloud native by design, open and flexible. Building on 30+ years of telco experience unrivalled by other cloud platforms, we have completely redesigned the solution architecture. Our new unified cloud platform represents more than a significant investment in modernising how traditionally siloed applications are deployed; it unlocks benefits for CSP customers which are only possible with network lifecycle automation.”
The NLA Cloud Platform is fully containerised and provides common building blocks for all Infovista’s solutions, such as a common web portal and engines for correlation, analytics, alerting and ML/AI automation of everyday workflows. This results in reduced footprint and resource utilisation for improved TCO and energy consumption and a simplification in deployments and configurations. The platform reduces complexity further by offering a single monitoring and maintenance portal for software updates across the network lifecycle, single sign-on user access for applications and use cases, and a standard user interface across the different solutions.
The initial ‘network lifecycle automation’ use cases powered by Infovista’s network planning, testing and assurance solutions hosted on the NLA Cloud Platform include, but are not limited to:
• Smart CAPEX – for rapid, AI/ML-enabled ROI-driven optimisation of roll-outs and network densification/expansion. The solution uses advanced Digital Twin and ML-driven scenario analysis, combining network performance, business KPIs such as revenue and churn, and network TCO predictions to accurately optimise network planning for optimised ROI.
• Active Testing and Assurance – to correlate drive-test and service assurance data for new actionable insights, comprehensive troubleshooting and on-demand active testing through Precision Drive Testing, Infovista’s data-driven ML/AI-based approach for targeted and automated network drive tests.
• 360° Assurance – a new family of use cases providing 360° Assurance of SLA-backed 5G services based on 5G slicing, VoLTE/VoNR and fixed voice and broadband services, as well as end-to-end monitoring and customer and device analytics.
