Lesson 1: Scale matters

Although some operators may elect to provide their own integration, most operators are choosing to work with SIs because the integrator’s full scope in 5G would otherwise require new skill assets as well as a heavy lift from teams across many of an operator’s organisations to support the project. Size and scale prove to matter when handling O-RAN integration to accommodate hyper-diversified 5G use cases especially in a standalone 5G environment, including those for Ultra Low Latency and massive Machine Type Communication networks.

The network will become more complex with multiple factors to consider including optimised use of MEC, cloud and network components from a diversified selection while assuring service performance at the same time. Given the magnitude and the detailed extent to which the total systems need to be validated and fine-tuned, operators that select SIs with domain expertise, deployment experience, and scale have greater success.

Lesson 2: Testing is critical

Granular end-to-end solution validation is critical. Though O-RAN standards are open, new vendor products must be tested rigorously for standards compliance and differences in interpretations of specifications must be corrected before entering the multivendor O-RAN ecosystem. It takes extensive infrastructure and proficiency to conduct use case testing, system validation, performance testing, environmental simulation, and more. An SI should be able to deliver the expertise, tools, and proving grounds in which to test devices, configurations, and applications as end-to-end solutions before launch.

Lesson 3: Product development expertise makes a difference in the field

In an O-RAN environment, a suitable SI can bring expertise based on real experiences of carrier-grade product development to roll out an O-RAN network for mission-critical services. Such an SI has a thorough understanding of product development and design approaches as well as a similar depth of technical knowledge and experiences with adjacent radio product developers within the industry. In other words, they have competent skillsets in radio design, fine-tuning of parameters, performance engineering, end to end diagnostics, quick root cause analysis and issue resolution to bring multivendor O-RAN implementations to life and sustain them. The ability to realise optimal fine-tuning for the end to end performance, immediately identify and pinpoint issues that arise even under a multivendor environment and resolve them in the field is critical, making a robust R&D organisation with O-RAN product expertise a needed asset.

Lesson 5: Address lifecycle management

Once an O-RAN solution has been deployed, lifecycle management becomes necessary to constantly update, upgrade, fine-tune, and improve the solution. This requires not only alignment among the vendor components, but also integration into CSPs’ existing systems for managing networks and services. The need to integrate with existing assets can pose a significant time constraint, especially for smaller, starter deployments. In such instances, systems integrators have been able to run pilot deployments separately on the CSP’s behalf, minimising their operational overhead and assisting a successful deployment. SIs can bring a wealth of experience from other domains to streamline the processes using methodologies like Agile development and associated open source CI/CD toolchains for managing the development and deployment processes while ensuring short cycles for features deployment. An important, related takeaway is that SIs can also codify, manage, and sustain processes for upgrades and updates across an operators’ different potential O-RAN solutions and improve the time-to-market for new applications.