Expose your network and make it rain!
API & network exposure represent the next steps in the evolution of “as-a-service” business models. How will that define the role of CSPs moving forward?
Data traffic consumption growth rates increase dramatically meaning that internet access has become as crucial part of everyday life for billions of people. This shifts the role of CSPs towards enabling potential for enterprises & innovation. What does that mean in telco terms?
While CSPs are vital to a digital society powered by the demand for ubiquitous connectivity, many are finding themselves facing a dichotomy of flat revenues and massive network investment. So how can they develop the rain-making capabilities to transform their networks into profitable service enablement platforms?
The revenue challenge
The facts speak for themselves. With annual data traffic consumption growth rates in double digitals, internet access has become as crucial to everyday living as electricity and running water. To fully exploit this trend, CSPs continue to make massive network investments to keep up with data demand. In fact, to date, such investments can be counted in the billions of dollars. Yet revenues remain not only static but are even declining in some regions. We believe the optimal path to restoring CSP revenue strength begins with offering personalized digital customer experiences, driven by new business models enabled by an evolution of IT and the network.
Pursuing differentiation
Many CSPs are already adopting such a strategy, deploying new network technologies, boosted by capabilities to offer differentiated services over software-defined, programmable networks. Examples of the new business models they’re adopting include those that support multiple verticals (e.g., manufacturing, ports, mining, and agriculture), ones which provide futuristic metaverse experiences and more.
Yet to truly remain viable, CSPs must go even beyond this. Doing so requires developing capabilities to offer network services to customers and business partners alike – such as innovative and flexible B2B services like SD-WAN and B2B2C services, which provide the ability to bundle tailored connectivity with gaming, health, or transport services.
API & network exposure changes everything
Networks are evolving from monolithic and proprietary to disaggregated and open, with network functions being virtualized and cloudified. With this evolution, the network is becoming a platform with the ability to support network services that can be controlled through a set of open APIs that organizations such as TM Forum, Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), 3GPP, and the Linux Foundation are actively defining.
Moreover, such network services can be augmented with partner services that can be exposed through APIs, thereby enabling CSPs to expand their offerings even further. With this paradigm shift, these players can effectively transform their networks into service enablement platforms with which customers and business partners can interact via open APIs, composing profitable, tailored customer experiences.
Amdocs Exposure Platform
To enable CSPs to capitalize on this evolution, Amdocs has extended the exposure capabilities of its Network Exposure Function (NEF) for 5G by creating a platform that takes a broader view of exposure, while hiding complexity and simplifying the consumption of APIs.
The result, Amdocs Exposure Platform, goes beyond NEF and 5G to act as an API aggregation layer, supporting network and partner services, as well as IT. In addition to enabling extraction of information from the network, it orchestrates both the network and required partner services using an intent-driven approach focusing on the desired business outcome.
Monetize the network and make it rain!
API and network exposure represent the next steps in the evolution of “as-a-service” business models, (e.g., CaaS, NaaS. Exposure through NEF and broader exposure platforms). Accordingly, by leveraging the capabilities of Amdocs Exposure Platform, CSPs can strongly position themselves to transform their networks into revenue “rain-making” service enablement platforms by:
- Supporting new business models with customers and business partners
- Offering truly global services, through interoperability with other partner services
- Increasing return on network investment and monetization beyond traditional connectivity
- Improving agility, leveraging an abstraction layer between the network, partner services and the business
To learn more about Amdocs Network Orchestration services, visit: https://www.amdocs.com/products-services/network-orchestration
