The New DSP:

Global CSP Survey by ICT Intuition

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

Exclusively for

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

Adapting to a New World

As operators approach their second decade of digital transformation, it’s more apparent than ever that this is

a journey and not a destination. Every year, there are new options and optimizations that aﬀect the journey,

and right now the focus is very much on 5G and adapting to a post COVID-19 world. Operators are adjusting

strategies to incorporate these changes while continuing to move forward with eﬀorts to transform business,

technology and operations functions.

5G will bring many new opportunities as businesses deploy thousands of connected devices and engage with

customers in a more digital way while accommodating remote workers and autonomous operations.

With these opportunities comes the need for improved customer-facing processes, network and service agility,

bigger partner ecosystems and, above all, security.

And with new revenue opportunities come new competitors vying for both consumer and business customers.

About the Study

The ICT Intuition global survey of operators includes

100 Tier 0, 1 and 2 operators evenly distributed

globally across North America, CALA, EMEA and

APAC. Targeted operators include Verizon, Bharti

Airtel, Rogers, Telenor, Telus, Sobank and Oi.

Executives responding include Oﬃcers, Directors,

Unit Heads and Senior Managers.

For our previous survey in 2017, operators were asked

about current progress and where they planned to be

in 12 months, two years and beyond to further gauge

progress as they transform their businesses, services

and technologies to become true Digital Service

Providers (DSPs). This survey was designed to gauge

progress against previous benchmarks as well as the

accuracy of those predictions.

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

Digital Channels Are in Place,

but It’s Still All About Care

Improving and optimizing customer experience ranks at the top of every operator’s business goals in the survey.

Steady progress is being made in implementing new digital channels, especially related to the care side of the

business.

And as recent global health events push customers and businesses toward digital channels for living, working and

studying, understanding and improving the customer experience becomes even more critical. Many working,

shopping, lifestyle and dining transactions that were suddenly shied to digital channels will likely stay there going

forward. Tele-health and remote work are here to stay and require operators to fortify the performance, reliability

and security of digital channels to optimize the experience for both residential and business customers.

Spending Prioritizes Digital Channels

In the previous study, operators were asked what portion of customer care transactions (e.g. orders, help,

support) is being conducted using digital channels. In 2017, less than 20% of operators surveyed were handling

half of all customer transactions via digital channels. In 2020, that ﬁgure is 56%, and 22% are handling nearly all

customer care transactions via digital channels.

Customer experience remains a top ﬁve spending priority for 69% of operators; however, that spending remains

focused on customer care rather than delivering new services, creating unique oﬀers or implementing loyalty

programs.

The disconnect comes when the business units responsible for customer care are not the same ones tasked with

other customer-facing functions. Priorities shi to improving tactical responsibilities rather than the foundational

changes required to achieve transformation.

77%

rate improving/

optimizing customer

experience as the top

business goal

Source: ICT Intuition

What portion of

customer care

transactions are

being conducted

using digital

channels?

<25% 25% to 50% 50% to 75% >75%

Source: ICT Intuition

2017 2020

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

5G and Digital Services

Shi Focus to Partner Ecosystems

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, growth in digital service oﬀerings and utilization was accelerating.

Signiﬁcant growth in IoT, cloud services and IaaS/PaaS has occurred since the 2017 survey, and operators are

moving quickly to oﬀer these new digital services.

SD-WAN wasn’t even an option in 2017, and now nearly 70% of operators deliver those services according to

the survey. The recent explosion in demand for services in remote education, tele-health and digital events will

combine with the millions of additional IoT device-worker connections to fuel the move to 5G and the unique

support requirements that go with it.

Current events and evolving technologies have created an ideal opportunity for operators to deliver not only

5Gconnectivity, but also a wide variety of new services and business models that were diﬃcult if not impossible

to deliver just a few years ago.

Yet for all the hype and anticipation, 5G is taking longer than expected to evolve. There is more complexity and

that equates to more challenges, but demand from business customers is soaring as industries adjust operating

models and accelerate their own digital transformations. Operators are responding with more deployments and

budget priority.

The solution for many operators is wider use of partners, and with that comes a need for dynamic partner

management and partner settlement solutions as the number and type of partner will continually change.

will

increase 5G

spending

Source: ICT Intuition

Which digital

services do you

currently oﬀer

your customers?

2017 2020

100

IoT Services

75%

Iaas/Paas

74%

Cloud Utilities

83%

Cloud Apps

77%

SD-WAN

69%

Source: ICT Intuition

63%

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

Partner Ecosystems Are Complex

As 5G opens up the possibilities for new services, operators know they need a large and eﬃcient partner

ecosystem to further grow their business and monetize that investment. Beyond technology partners, service

providers will need to work with digital service partners, content providers and even other operators.

Managing a wide variety and high number of partners requires a broad new approach that existing systems

were never intended to deliver. Building a partner ecosystem requires both intelligence and automation to

rapidly and accurately evaluate, certify, on-board, oﬀ-board and settle with partners.

Regardless of approach, more investment is needed to implement a solid end-to-end partner platform. While

most operators agree that BSS functions are in need of further investment, only 26% named BSS as a spending

priority. However, that ﬁgure does not include OSS/BSS budgeting allocated to business units outside of IT,

which is becoming much more common.

What aspects

of BSS/revenue

management

require further

investment

to meet

transformation

objectives?

2010 30 50 60 70 80 9040 100

50%

55%

63%

64%

66%

67%

68%

72%

86%

5G ready rating/charging

B2B2x capability

Partner management

Support for advanced payment mechanisms

Dynamic product management

eSIM management capability

Multi-vertical revenue management capability

Converged revenue management

Advanced loyalty management

Source: ICT Intuition

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

Public Cloud Acceptance Is Growing

as Multicloud Becomes a Necessity

In our previous survey, 75% of operators predicted they would have cloud OSS/BSS deployments in two years

and 93% within three years, and that prediction has been realized. Over 90% have deployed at least part of

their OSS/BSS functionality to some type of cloud platform. While most favor a private telco cloud, there are

numerous functions that are now being moved out of private data centers into public and even vendor cloud

platforms.

In this survey, North America is moving fastest to the public cloud while operators in EMEA continue to favor a

private cloud for most OSS/BSS functions. The exception is APAC, which eschews cloud OSS/BSS deployment

in general with more than 30% responding “Not Deployed in Cloud” compared to less than 10% across other

regions.

BSS is a popular starting point for moving to the public cloud given that many BSS initiatives are replacements

rather than extensions of existing systems. And public cloud is thought to be generally less expensive than

private cloud as operators only pay for what they need, can scale on demand and avoid the upfront expense

and ongoing operations of their own telco cloud.

The most popular BSS application in the public cloud is CRM with 36% of deployments. Product catalog as

well as billing and revenue management are also growing with 28% and 18% respectively that are public cloud

based. Operators are looking to follow next with OSS/Orchestration.

Which cloud

platforms are

being used or

partially used for

OSS/BSS?

(average of

responses across

primary OSS/BSS

functions)

Not Deployed

in Cloud

Vendor

Cloud

Public

Cloud

Private

Telco

Cloud

42%

22%

27%

Source: ICT Intuition

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

5G and Edge Cloud Will Further Drive Multicloud

New 5G services, especially those that require an edge cloud for latency or performance requirements,

will further drive public and vendor cloud deployments. Operators will need fast access to cloud resources

in many locations and will need to form partnerships with specialist cloud platform players to achieve their

service goals.

As long as these multi-cloud deployment strategies deliver the right performance at the right price, we expect

operators will continue to migrate some OSS/BSS functionality away from private telco clouds.

Security Becomes a Bigger Challenge

With increasing virtual workloads, massive numbers of IoT devices and distribution of services and OSS/BSS to

multiple public and private cloud platforms, security and privacy remain top concerns.

In addition to the challenge of integrating partner elements and service oﬀerings, operators must ensure that

strict levels of control and monitoring are maintained to protect sensitive data and infrastructure while repelling

cyber-attacks and intrusions. Vendor solutions will require similarly strong security frameworks that are part of

the products and solutions being delivered to operators.

77%

rank security

as the top

operational

challenge

Source: ICT Intuition

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

More Automation = More Analytics and AI/ML

When discussing business strategy, 70% of operators insist that a high degree of operations automation is a key

element to delivering on digital transformation. Not coincidentally, that same percentage indicate that reducing

operations expense is a goal of their digital strategy.

Every operator is managing a hybrid of ﬁxed, wireless and virtual resources. And those virtual resources are

becoming cloud native. Add a multi-cloud environment, extensive partner management, product development

and customer experience management, and automation becomes a necessity.

From security to interoperability and orchestration, operators need sophisticated automation to ensure carrier-

class reliability, scalability and performance. The problem is that so much attention is being paid to network

expansion and virtualization that OSS/BSS oen becomes an aerthought. So much so that 73% of operators

say existing OSS/BSS cannot manage complexity, and 61% don’t think the technology is even ready.

There are pockets of automation gaining momentum such as operational process automation. Nearly one-

third have automation deployed across the business, while 39% have implemented automation within speciﬁc

business units and nearly half will be spending more on automation than in the previous 12 months.

Yet automation of existing workﬂows isn’t enough. Orchestration/OSS systems need to move away from

deterministic workﬂows to declarative, intent-based orchestration based on standard service models and

descriptors.

As a result, a majority of operators will be spending more on analytics, artiﬁcial intelligence and machine

learning than last year with an emphasis on operational and customer analytics/AI/ML. Progress has been

slower in this area as a result of poor data quality and a lack of data science skills. As intelligence is built into

systems rather than acting as a stand-alone function, utilization and results will improve. Many vendor solutions

are adding intelligent automation to their solutions, and operators are seeing success.

2010 30 50 60 70 80 9040 100

61%

64%

68%

73%

74%

75%

77%

Security

Technology interoperability

Legacy processes, hardware, soware, systems

Existing OSS/BSS not managing complexity

Existing OSS/BSS not managing hybrid networks

System interoperability

Technology isn’t there yet

Source: ICT Intuition

Rank the

operational

challenges to

successful digital

transformation

(ranked extremely or

quite challenging)

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

Conclusion

In the decade or so since operators started transforming to become digital enterprises and digital service providers,

they are ﬁnally making real progress. Technology has caught up, complexity is slowly being reduced with standards

for APIs, automation and XaaS oﬀerings, cloud is becoming more reliable, and customers are becoming more digital.

Execution is accelerating in all regions with the majority of operators feeling like they are at least halfway there.

As network, service creation and customer experience eﬀorts take priority, security, staﬃng and interoperability

remain barriers to successful transformation.

The outbreak of COVID-19 and, more importantly, the response to the pandemic by governments, businesses

and service providers, have shown that rigid manual operating models, over-provisioning of ﬁxed networks and

an inability to rapidly deploy capacity can adversely aﬀect customers.

This suggests a new and important window of opportunity to accelerate digital transformation in operator

enterprises and for their business customers. Expanding cloud-based networks and services, automation and

built-in intelligence are needed to support a new normal that includes remote work, education and healthcare.

And while the scale of these networks is daunting, the processes to operate them don’t have to be. Many of today’s

network operations processes are needed to work around existing systems and processes. Add-ons and exceptions

are so common that the original process has been entirely obliterated to achieve the same outcomes. Operators can

replace outdated systems with well thought-out processes, solid executable transition plans and partners.

Foundational business and operational strategies must be reiterated and fortiﬁed so that “make do” doesn’t

become “makeover”. Flexible architectures allow room for new technology and techniques, rather than

creating additional silos. There is an opportunity to deﬁne diﬀerentiating, optimized, automated processes, and

there are systems that can implement those processes.

Digital transformation has been going on for a decade and will continue for the foreseeable future, and in

between operators need to keep the network running, keep customers happy and monetize operations.

Change on a global scale is diﬃcult, but as we’ve seen with the response to COVID-19, not impossible.

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS:

Making CSPs Central to Their Customers’

Digital Experience in the 5G Era

With the rollout of 5G networks, increased power at the edge and partner-enabled ecosystems bringing new

services to market, CSPs need modernized BSS/OSS that meets the new network, IT and business demands

that these services create.

Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS is a modernized and digital portfolio of products and services that has been

redesigned and enhanced for the 5G era.

It includes Customer Engagement, Digital BSS and Digital OSS layers, each of which contains a broad range of

enabling functional areas. Complementing the horizontal layers are Cloud Platform Management and Advanced

Analytics. The entire product suite runs on the Netcracker Cloud Platform, allowing CSPs to beneﬁt from the

cloud scale, performance and eﬃciency of ﬂexible delivery models.

Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS is fully open, standards-compliant and cloud-native. It allows CSPs to develop their

own enhancements or co-develop functions through a low code platform and blueprint delivery approach. Central

to Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS is an industry-leading security framework with the highest level of proven system-

wide security and privacy, providing critical protection in an era of increased cyberattacks, intrusion and disruption.

INTEGRATION &

API MANAGEMENT

CLOUD PLATFORM

ADVANCED ANALYTICS

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

NetcrackerDigital BSS/OSS for the 5G Digital Era

MODERN SOFTWARE

Built for cloud

Simpliﬁed and

lightweight

Dynamically adaptable

to business needs

Sets security benchmark

Open and standards

based

CUTTING EDGE

5G, edge cloud

Digital ecosystem

enablement

Advanced customer

experience

Hyper automation

Modernized delivery

Source: Netcracker

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business

95 Sawyer Road, Waltham, MA 02453 USA Tel. +1-781-419-3300 | www.Netcracker.com.

University Oﬃce Park III

95 Sawyer Road

Waltham, MA 02453 USA

1-781-419-3300

www.Netcracker.com

/NetcrackerTech

@NetcrackerTech

/netcracker

Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS helps CSPs become central to customer lifestyle needs by:

Radically transforming customer engagement: CSPs can anticipate customer needs with AI-driven

contextual interactions to go beyond problem solving and deliver relevant new services that combine their

services, partner services and rich 5G experiences. Personalized oﬀerings can be dynamically created and

delivered with a groundbreaking gaming-style user experience and cross-partner loyalty schemes.

Rapidly achieving monetization with dynamic partner ecosystems: Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS helps

build dynamic digital ecosystems to quickly adapt to changing business and market needs. With automated

onboarding, simpliﬁed lifecycle management and partner-centric B2B2X opportunities, Netcracker enables

CSPs to become both leaders and enablers of new platform-based monetization opportunities in diverse

markets.

Fully enabling hyper automation: Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS uses a new operational model to eliminate

manual tasks and drive hyper automation across network domains, cross-domain services, business processes

and channels. Its digital applications are cloud-native, utilize AI/advanced analytics and run in a multi-cloud

environment, delivering the high performance and resiliency of telco cloud platforms to public clouds.

Innovatively implementing a new service and delivery model: Delivery is optimized with Agile/

DevOps methodologies and a blueprint approach, providing an extensive library of out-of-the-box processes

and functional capabilities to minimize the lengthy requirements of gathering phases and accelerate solution

delivery. Netcracker accelerates cloud migration by providing a set of specialized services for cloud enablement

that helps CSPs build up, migrate to, or improve on cloud-native IT environments.

Conclusion: Netcracker Digital BSS/OSS brings a new level of modernization to service provider business and

operations environments, helping them to innovate and disrupt in the 5G digital economy.

The New DSP:

Building a Successful 5G Business