Multivendor deployment integration for future mobile networks

Abstract

During the last few years, we have seen a tremendous explosion in the range of possibilities when speaking about software delivery. The web-scale IT capabilities have evolved drastically and complex web-based applications have adapted rapidly in an ever changing world where user experience is in the focus. Terms like Agile, Cloudification, microservices or DevOps are lately on the crest of the wave. The focus of this paper, however, is not within the managed services providers, but with the network providers, or operators. These companies are experiencing similar challenges as described above especially with the imminent arrival of 5th generation mobile networks, but with a different set of constraints that make the adoption of the new paradigms or best practices a tough process. Along the paper we will cover the main bottlenecks that operators face in terms of adapting to the ever increasing network needs, paying especial attention to the multivendor nature and the extreme high availability expected in this kind of services. We present our tool for scheduling deployments in this special environment with the related workflows and leveraged DevOps best practices. Finally, we measure how a proof of concept tool helps to improve the delivery process in multivendor environments.