How Globe Telecom, Dell Are Engineering AI-Native OSS

Philippines-based Globe Telecom is reinventing its operations support system (OSS) – the backbone of the carrier’s network that manages and monitors operations – with an AI-native approach that creates a unified data strategy to provide more predictive network capabilities and outsized gains in customer service improvements, officials from Globe and Dell Technologies explained in a new webinar produced by MeriTalk.

Dennis Abella, who heads network digitization and data management at Globe Telecom, said the company’s push to create a cutting-edge OSS drives toward the dual goals of improving customer experience and creating the tech infrastructure necessary to boost operating and financial performance of the carrier’s network.

The Globe Telecom official talked about the importance of adopting an AI-native mindset to deal with three big opportunities presented by the technology transformation.

The first of those is to create a unified data strategy, Abella said, that involves “breaking down [data] silos, enabling real-time data analytics and transparency across OSS layers.”

The intent of that effort, he said, is “to decouple the data from the application” and enrich the data to provide greater predictive network capabilities.

The second, Abella said, involves the fruits of automation. “Once you have this kind of foundation, this is where we are more confident [to] make more autonomous network operations where an AI-driven network leveraging Dell’s innovation will reduce manual intervention by automating functions such as configuration, issue detection, correlation, resolution, and so on,” he said. Those advantages, in turn, give Globe Telecom “faster adaptability to changes in network demand,” Abella said.

And the third, he said, is using AI-native automation to employ “digital twins” approaches to network planning and operations “where we are virtually simulating the model and optimizing implementation.”

“What’s the impact? It allows us to minimize disruption and accelerate our time to market so we can monetize our network ahead of time, we can accelerate to get our ROI [return on investment] because of all these digital twins capability that we are working with,” Abella said.

“At the end of the day, it’s not only customer experience,” Abella said. “We are also looking at operational efficiency and excellence, where we are allowing our people to focus more in terms of what should be the real priorities” and using the technology upgrade to lower operational costs, he said.

David Trigg, Global Vice President, Telecom Systems Business at Dell Technologies, explained that his team came up with an “A-B-C-D” framework for how to visualize the OSS transition effort.

“A stands for AI, B stands for kind of the broker and how … all the logs and all the information is processed. C is the cloud platform, or the telco cloud platform, and D is the data,” he said.

“For most of us, they kind of work top down,” Trigg continued. “But what we’ve learned through this and working with Globe, you almost have to think bottoms up because it starts and quite frankly ends with the data. And if you don’t have the data, if you’re not thinking about the data, and you’re not thinking about how that impacts your network and your architecture design for the long term … you can make some really bad decisions as you’re planning and architecting your networking [and] your environment.”

The Dell Technologies official also emphasized that both companies are “aligned strategically” on “how we see the market and where the market is going” for telecom tech.

“It’s been awesome to be a part of the partnership with Globe,” Trigg said. “They’re leading some of these discussions around adopting an AI-native telecom network [and] really thinking through their data-centric strategy.”

“Because AI without data just doesn’t work,” said Trigg, who said the relationship gives both companies the opportunity to learn more about improving network operations to create better capabilities for the carrier’s customers.

Get the full story – watch the conversation with Globe and Dell Technologies.