Does your network transformation and automation programme risk leaving legacy service silos in its wake and building up hidden costs?
Network transformation may mean that some of your existing service elements are left behind – you need to offer the services, but the platforms aren’t compatible with your evolved architecture. Upgrade legacy IN and B2B voice platforms to cloud-native solutions that align with your overall roadmaps.
Gintel can help migrate legacy IN and B2B solutions to a modern SDP, matching your cloud-native evolution and convergence goals.
Telcos today are migrating towards cloud-native architectures based on frameworks like Kubernetes. The first wave of IMS solutions has already been virtualised, and new, containerised network functions are rapidly taking over.
This ongoing transition has a twist, however. Many platforms that deliver key services – both in your Intelligent Network and for B2B customers don’t have an evolution path towards cloud-native architectures.
As a result, they may be left behind as orphaned silos, undermining your overall transformation efforts and cost reduction goals. We’ve seen this in practice - many operators who have adopted cloud-native IMS platforms, for example, have found themselves also having to retain isolated service silos or functions that are not integrated with their new architecture.
These now siloed functions/platforms are often those that were historically deeply integrated with network elements, and thus whose architecture is harder to modernise. Let’s look at an example.
SIP Trunking
SIP trunking itself is not a legacy technology: SIP is IP-native and is perfectly compatible with cloud-native IMS.
However, it’s been around for many years and, as a result, many operators have operational platforms that manage their SIP trunk portfolio – but which do not have a pathway to either the latest architecture or align fully with IMS application and triggering requirements.
These still provide services but remain as isolated functions, not fully integrated with other IMS-native services. As a result, this creates a new cost – maintaining a legacy service silo alongside other services that are more efficiently and closely integrated with the core infrastructure. A key issue that has impeded this overdue convergence is security. There remains a need to isolate and protect corporate PBX connections enabled via SIP trunks from the core IMS.
Gintel has solved this problem and has deployed IMS-native SIP trunking, cloud-native and fully aligned with current and future architectural considerations in several leading European operators – unlocking the cost reduction and convergence long sought.
IN services
It may be a surprise to some readers that many operators continue to support a range of legacy IN services, beyond classical number translation, non-geographic and emergency call distribution.
These can include outliers, like the speaking clock, as well as service-number based services that support resilience for routing to enterprise account contact centres. Often, these services continue to run in platforms deployed 20 or more years ago. The original vendor may no longer exist – but the platforms continue to be maintained and may exist separately from the core IN service portfolio.
Such services may persist because they are needed to support specific user groups – perhaps elderly or vulnerable people, perhaps as part of digital inclusion policies, and perhaps to support key customer accounts.
Regardless, they create a separate patchwork of infrastructure and solutions that drain costs and, while providing valuable perhaps mandatory services, reduce overall efficiency and impede transformation goals.
So, what’s to be done? In such cases, the service logic that was originally implemented may have been designed using the tools available on the legacy platforms. Typically, this will have included an IN-based Service Creation Environment (SCE), allowing the operator to customise services for these very custom requirements.
The answer is to migrate these services to a new platform that is already equipped with an SCE that allows for no-code/low-code customisation: the Gintel Service Delivery Platform. This offers an integrated SCE that provides functionality and usability, and which has evolved beyond the IN-based model of SIB composition to include more advanced and simplified service logic creation and management capabilities.
This allows both existing services to be replicated where custom logic has been implemented, while also support future customisation options. But, the Service Delivery Platform enables multiple such services to be run in parallel – providing an ideal platform for convergence of legacy as well as current services.
The cloud-native architecture and compatibility with widely deployed solutions such as Oracle OCCAS means that deployment can be eased, delivering cost reduction and ongoing cost saving through the gradual migration of legacy services to a new platform, aligned with your architectural trajectory.
IP Centrex and PBX solutions
Many operators have long provided hosted IP Centrex and PBX solutions for business customers. Equally, many of these have been targeted towards fixed connections. They exist as adjuncts to the core network, often associated with SIP trunk services that provided dedicated connectivity to specific enterprise customers.
Since they serve valuable B2B accounts, they continue to have importance. But, increasingly, such platforms are disconnected from the architecture and service evolution that operators wish to pursue.
For example, since deployment, many have converged mobile and fixed cores – but these legacy platforms cannot deliver true FMC capabilities, as they lack mobile-native performance and cannot align with VoLTE or VoNR requirements.
Moreover, they are neither cloud-native nor aligned with the ongoing evolution of the IMS core. Indeed, many exist alongside transformed assets, such as fully virtualised IMS solutions – silos that continue to deliver but which represent a drag on the overall cost base.
Again, Gintel can help. We can deploy our Service Delivery Platform with Cloud PBX functionality that offers full FMC and integration with your mobile network, as cloud-native functions that replace legacy IP Centrex and PBX solutions, enriching functionality with new, seamless experiences.
Transform with Gintel
So, what is the solution to addressing platforms that get left behind because they can’t be virtualised or they have no roadmap for deeper integration? Is there a way to ensure that the modernisation of B2B services is aligned with parallel investments and accounts for platforms that were integrated into the network, but which do not evolve to cloud-native architectures.
Fortunately, there is. Orphaned service solutions can be replaced. And operators must address the modernisation of their service platforms – particularly high-value B2B services – alongside their other transformation activities so that they really reap the benefits.
The first step to take is to talk to Gintel. Gintel has an integrated suite of solutions that leverage our converged Service Delivery Platform, and which solve the transformation silo problem.
With this future-proof architecture, legacy and orphaned services can be migrated to carrier-scale and grade platform that will evolve with your other transformation activities. It means you can remove network inefficiencies, reduce costs and build a new pathway for customers that depend on these services.
Talk to Gintel
Gintel helps operators succeed in highly competitive, regulated markets, enabling differentiation for their business service portfolio. Our telecommunications heritage, know-how and experience are backed by a track record of delivering successful solutions to Tier 1 operators, MVNOs, ISPs and Systems Integrators. We enable our customers to stay at the forefront of service innovation in a rapidly moving market, offering agility and flexibility and delivering profit for their business. Get in touch.
