Hi, in fact there are many cases of on time, on quality and on budget inventory implementations, and from several vendors.
In my humble opinion (after 20 years in this area) key success factors are:
- clear purpose, scope and release management --> never forget the ultimate business goal and do not indulge in perfectionism;
- modeling is not modelism --> data must be useful and valuable to run processes and create value and of course those data, accurately selected to be in our wanted inventory system, must be as accurate as possible;
- do not over rely on network discovery. many have already commented about troubles and cost of it. the 2 cents I would feel valuable to add are:
- discovery cannot replace well designed processes to ensure data quality and reliability, because not all data stored in the inventory system, which are relevant to business processes outcomes, can be discovered from network;
- new technologies can for sure help identifying resource and service topologies, and their dynamics, to be documented in the inventory system, through AI/ML and Big Data (Data Driven Inventory Management).
Last but not least I would suggest to not underestimate the role which inventory will have with NFV, 5G and network slice management; its capabilities shall be evolved but it will be still central for a full scale / carrier grade deployment of next virtualized networks and services.
BR,
Ferd.
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ferdinando pagnotta
Ericsson Inc.
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Original Message:
Sent: Mar 12, 2019 02:47
From: thembinkosi ndebele
Subject: Inventory Management
Traditional Inventory Management powered by Oracle , Amdocs , Netcracker , Ericsson have been very long and combersome projects , majority of them with little declared success .
The reasons for this has been multiple vendors in the telcos with inventory distributed all over by vendor , technology , domain , region.
The core of blockchain is decentralised and immutable.
Could this technology be the answer to telco's age old problem of inventory management.
#Blockchain
#ZeroTouchAutomation
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thembinkosi ndebele
MTN Group Limited
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