5G offers significant opportunities for operators, MNOs, and service providers to support new use cases and service innovation. However, it also requires a new approach to service and slice testing, validation, and assurance throughout the lifecycle – which means adopting DevOps practices. No matter where you are on your DevOps journey, Emblasoft Evolver can help.

5G is still in its early stages, but it’s clear that it will offer significant opportunities for service innovation and differentiation, enabling operators to develop new and varied use cases for both the B2C and B2B2C segments.

5G brings opportunity… and complexity

However, that innovation comes at a cost – complexity, not just in terms of taking advantage of an entirely new architecture – with dynamic orchestration, virtualisation, network slicing, and processing pushed to the edge – but also in the varied and new use cases it will support, with each demanding diverse performance and SLA requirements^[1].

B2B2C customers, in particular, will demand high QoS and SLA delivery levels. It means that operators will need to be innovative, offer service differentiation, and agility in order to take advantage. In turn, this demands a new way of testing services and slices, not just pre-launch but also over the lifecycle (i.e., active monitoring).

It means that previous ways of testing services will become largely redundant. Testing cycles lasting months, from lab to staging environment to live network – and possibly a limited trial and then launch to the full subscriber base (or chosen segment) – will no longer be sufficient to maintain service innovation and operational agility. While some operators still do this, once the 5G core is fully deployed, this will no longer be sufficient.

A new approach to service iteration, testing, and assurance

The new 5G landscape will require a completely novel approach to service launch, delivery, validation and assurance, from launch to end-of-life. This will require the adoption of DevOps practices, an enterprise-wide approach to continuous service innovation, as well as a need for active monitoring to assure SLAs and performance parameters.

DevOps leans on continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous testing (CI/CD/CT), with operators and service providers needing to constantly enhance existing services and launch new ones to remain competitively differentiated and agile. Each iteration or new service chain needs to be rigorously and continuously tested and validated pre- and post-launch to ensure that customer SLAs are met.

Where CI/CD enables development teams to release incremental code changes quickly and frequently, CT requires the automated testing of new code at every stage of the software development lifecycle. This enables service providers to reduce business risk by exposing any issues with the service (or code) early.

Adopting such a repeatable approach to service iteration and innovation in short cycles allows organisations to improve and release software on a ‘continuous’ basis, while reducing cost, time to market and risk. Put simply, it enables assured continual service innovation.

However, while this is the nirvana for operators and service providers, it is by no means universally adopted. At this point in time, operators need to adapt their testing strategy to what they can actually realise, with the resources they currently have in hand.

Emblasoft Evolver can support service innovation regardless of the stage of your DevOps journey

At Emblasoft we realise that each MNO is at a different stage in their DevOps journey, which requires a more pragmatic approach to service innovation based on the stage you are at. Not everyone is yet geared up for an enterprise-wide CI/CD/CT approach.

That’s why Emblasoft Evolver is designed to adapt to all models at each stage of your journey. Evolver also offers Active Monitoring to provide an automated solution for testing any number of different traffic scenarios, from one agent to millions.

Unlike most other solutions, the Evolver test and validation platform supports multiple protocols, including (but not limited to) Diameter, MSRP, SIP, HTTP, and RTP, simultaneously – as well as legacy signalling. It also enables isolated, node-specific testing – for example the AMF, SMF, AUSF, PCF, and UDM – as well as end-to-end testing of the 5G core.

Emblasoft Active Monitoring supports CT, assuring service levels throughout the lifecycle. Our solution deploys remote software agents into live networks that mimic UE. They interact with live services to support the collection of real-time data across multiple parameters.

Regardless of where you are on your DevOps journey, Evolver and its active monitoring functionality can help you to adjust, tune and optimise your delivery processes, across any cycle.

While it supports hybrid models, based on your stage of the journey, it also provides a platform for extending your DevOps / CI/CD/CT capabilities when you’re ready. If you’re not yet ready for CI/CD/CT, Evolver will also help you get there. Get in touch to find out more about how we can help you to realise the potential of 5G and enhance your agility and service innovation and differentiation.

^[1] https://www.analysysmason.com/research/content/articles/new-5g-testing-rma01/