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rmine if retransmissions make sense. Would the application still be interested in a real-time data point that was missed? The devices could be collecting data over a longer time to search for trend analysis and may come online periodically to send bigger chunks of data. Also, this could happen based on a trigger or message received by the device: Traffic profiles: In such scenarios the traffic and the bearers in uplink alone could be modeled after non-real-time bearers, which could be default bearers. Retransmissions would make sense here and bigger-sized packets could be used to ensure that the payload goes through. The latency requirements may not be too strict here as more importance is placed on the data's correctness and validity. All the above would need to be validated with the actual IoT application requirements. CHAPTER 3 DEPLOYMENT CHALLENGES IN EVOLVING 4G Cloud Computing and Mobile Internet We briefly discussed the IoT and the implications the technology and application of this hold for us in the future. To complete the discussion, we briefly review a couple of related technologies in Cloud computing and mobile Internet that enables the IoT and a host of other applications that are deemed to have a disruptive influence for the future in terms of potential business impact. We have already discussed the growing trend of mobile Internet and how projections indicate that the same will quickly outgrow desktop access to become the dominant way in which the Internet will be accessed. Also, we have hinted that standardization of Cloud access technologies could enable faster deployment of the IoT and help in adoption of this idea. As per the McKinsey report on disruptive technologies in 2013, the following are the projections for impacts on mobile Internet by 2025: By 2013, there has been an increase of six times in the sale of mobile devices since 2007. In 2013, 4.3 billion people remain unconnected, with a possible 1 billion workers that could use online transactions. By 2025, it is estimated the potential i |
mpact of mobile Internet will range from a low of $3.7 trillion to $10.8 trillion. To get a sense of the impact of Cloud computing, we could peruse the following estimates: In an era ruled by Moore's law, it takes about 18 months to double server performance, but the Cloud now enables rentals to be SO low as to make the cost of owning a server three times that of renting one in the Cloud. 2.7 billion people could be served from the Cloud using 50 million servers. There could be up to $3 trillion of IT spent that could potentially be on the Cloud. By 2025, it is estimated that the potential impact of Cloud computing will range from a low of $1.7 trillion to a high of $6.2 trillion. So, how should all of this be of interest to mobile operators? As a mobile network service provider, you should look to capitalize on the Cloud and solidify your strategy. You must look to enable services through the Cloud and the applications that will enable the end users to take advantage of them. This could also include the ability to enable access to popular Cloud services through your mobile Internet. You could also design plans and services to make it easier for end users to use the Cloud for their data and services. As a business that provides solutions to be deployed, your network roadmaps must reflect services that enable the Cloud as an integral part of the solution. You must brainstorm to understand which parts of the network can enable Cloud interactions directly and which parts could aggregate and interoperate with existing Cloud services. CHAPTER 3 DEPLOYMENT CHALLENGES IN EVOLVING 4G Summary This chapter started by looking at key challenges facing LTE deployment-those associated with the technology itself and also the business challenges that are related to making the investments necessary-and the uncertainty surrounding the market evolution. From there we went through some concepts related to recent evolutions and trends in mobile and Internet usage, in terms of the different types of devices being used to access the In |
ternet, and how mobile Internet growth projected to overtake PC or laptop-based Internet access within the next few years. We went through basic traffic profiling concepts and related dimensioning tools that would be needed by the operator to provision and plan for a deployment and how the subscriber's access and applications can impact the traffic profiles. Next, we spent some time discussing the forecasts shared by major telecom players and analysts to understand what sort of future trends could be interesting for the operators. We examined one such technology, which is the Internet of Things. Also, we looked at some pointers on what aspects of LTE networks may need to be tuned to cater to the IoT as we understand it. What you should be able to see through this chapter is that both LTE networks and the trends are evolving, and the projected trends should be closely followed so operators and vendors can take advantage of the potential economic value associated with these technologies. CHAPTER 4 Network Roadmaps "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don't much care where-" said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. "-so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough." Alice in Wonderland -Lewis Carroll Let's face it-the network's business is a very tough business. There are too many stakeholders-operators, vendors, standardization, end users, technology, equipment, government, partners for production, delivery, and so on. Over and above this, we have already discussed the challenges facing the business climate-in terms of investment, projections, customer demand, usage profiles, traffic patterns and their evolution, and so forth. In such a complex business environment, how do operators ensure that their plans remain valid, relevant, and that they can stay competitive? We strongly believe that road mapping as |
a process offers a structured approach to deal with multiple stakeholders and evolve a united vision to go toward the future. The roadmap serves to both maintain the course toward achieving certain business objectives for the present while also working in a direction for the collective future where the business and ecosystem can continue to flourish successfully and remain relevant. This chapter starts by detailing the needs for a technology roadmap. We also look at what the levels of detail of such a roadmap could be and what timelines such roadmaps could target. From there, we evolve toward network roadmaps, and what they imply to the operator in terms of configuration options and models that could be used to support them. We would like to set up the fundamentals of need for the roadmaps in this chapter SO we can elaborate more in later chapters on how roadmaps can allow networks to evolve. Later, we'd like to offer a process to create and evolve a roadmap. We hope to drive home some important points though; to be able to appreciate the power of roadmaps one must first understand the need for a roadmap. Thereafter, one must understand enough detail, not only to be able to create a roadmap, but also to appreciate that the process of creating the roadmap is almost as important as the resultant roadmap itself. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS What Is a Technology Roadmap? A technology roadmap is the result of a strategic technology planning process that cooperatively identifies (1) a particular Industry's common product and process performance targets, (2) the technology alternatives and milestones for meeting these targets, and (3) a common technology path for research and development activities. Introduction to Technology Road mapping: The Semiconductor Industry Association's Technology Road mapping Process SAND97-0666, April 1997 Any industry that gets established and flourishes does SO based on some fundamental principles: There should be a strong consumer-driven need for the products that are produced by the indus |
try. The industry must develop standards that help evolve an ecosystem of interworking products based on components. Multiple vendors are able to make products that work with one another, giving the consumer the ability to interchange parts of various solutions. The industry must be able to innovate constantly to match consumer expectations and drive further demand by generating future features that create revenue making. In the telecom industry, the technology roadmap published by the consortium 3GPP keeps media interested and excited about top-line capabilities of future features planned in a technology like LTE-Advanced. At the same time, the nitty-gritty of implementing the roadmaps through standards helps companies innovate and cooperate to interwork and get the technology to be part of actual products. The roadmaps help lay a pathway for features that eventually get implemented and also give a structure for the companies to work with one another to evolve the items that get implemented. Understand Need for a Roadmap Do we really need a roadmap for all technologies? What are the specific characteristics that help identify or confirm the need for a roadmap? Toward answering these questions, let's briefly revisit some basics of technology definition. tech.nol.o.gy The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, esp. in industry: "computer technology"; "recycling technologies". Machinery and equipment developed from such scientific knowledge. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary Note some key characteristics of this: Technology is oriented toward an application. The underlying knowledge on which the technology works is specific to the particular industry. There is an underlying scientific basis to the knowledge that makes up the technology. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Because technology is developed on the basis of very specific knowledge, there is a strong need to properly manage the technology itself. Technology management, and the process that is used, is almost as important as the technology itself. |
As any technology evolves, it tends to comprise both implicit and explicit knowledge. It is easier to capture explicit knowledge in terms of documents that accompany manifestation of a technology like a manual for a mobile phone. Implicit or tacit knowledge is better translated through experience sharing and other such trainings. Such knowledge definitely needs to be managed under the gambit of technology management. Technology management addresses the effective identification, selection, acquisition, development, exploitation and protection of technologies (product, process and infrastructural) needed to maintain [and grow] a market position and business performance in accordance with the company's objectives. European Institute of Technology Management Though the above definition explains technology management from the perspective of a company, we should understand that this very well applies to an industry too. It is important to retain focus on some valid points from this definition that we'll revisit later: A company's or industry's objectives demand specific market positions to be met or grown into so business performance satisfies the same. A company or industry needs to manage technological aspects with commercial impacts to ensure relevance to what is getting developed. There needs to be ways to identify, select, acquire, develop, exploit, and protect technologies that would help satisfy these needs. Elements of the list above imply that companies need a way to ascertain or project needs over a time period in forms of commercial goals, which would then need to be met with specific technologies that are managed. Companies mostly organize work across several technical and financial departments to arrive at such a consensual document that captures the relevant information in terms of the growth the company expects to achieve, the financial measurements of these, and the technologies that help the company achieve the projected goals. A document that captures such information typically tends to have elements |
of a roadmap in the sense that: The final goals for the period are broken down into smaller goals, which are quantified and measurable. The smaller goals, limited by timelines, also have specific technological achievements to be made and validated. The milestones of such technological achievements tend to indicate features or subfeatures that need to be developed and incorporated as whole or part of a product that the company develops. Functions of companies such as strategy development and forecasting typically develop positions about what the company needs to achieve in the future and helps formulate the dialog that needs to happen with the technical functions to arrive at what the company's projected path looks like. Any document that captures the end result becomes a roadmap that could be shared with the whole of the company to confirm and implement the collective vision that is intended to be achieved. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Formulation of a Technology Roadmap Let's look at a fictional product meeting where key personnel from different parts of a product company are meeting to compare their notes and determine what should be happening with the product. The following is an example of a typical product meeting: Actors: Bob from Product Marketing, Alan from Engineering, David from Sales, and Rick from customer support. Bob: As I was saying, customers would like to know what features our product would be supporting in the subsequent releases. I have a long list of features that different customers want. So tell me, what can we do over this year and the coming year to make this happen? Alan: Engineering is pretty far behind the current commitments as it is and we surely would need to drop some features even to get current releases out. The question is which features do I drop? David: Team-1 really need to give some clear directions to sales. We keep meeting lots of customers and I am not really sure if we are speaking about the correct features that we are focusing on. I would like to read from the same sheet |
SO we get customers to look at the critical few features that we will be building in the coming few releases. Rick: Please remember that our customers see SO many issues in the field currently, they are desperate to understand when and how we will be fixing these issues. With all the focus that we would be giving to the future, let's not forget our current woes, which we need to rectify to improve customer satisfaction. So we can understand that different stakeholders have different needs for information about the product under development. In an ideal product development environment, all these concerns get addressed with the technology roadmap of the product. The ways in which the product gets developed depends on the particular road-mapping process the product company actually may follow. Note We will be covering the possible processes for technology road mapping in more detail in Chapter 6. In short though, the way in which the roadmap gets developed may depend on some of the following aspects: Size of the organization. Smaller companies may prefer shorter and more informal processes for roadmap development. The number of stakeholders involved. For organizations like 3GPP, where there are many stakeholders actively participating in the road-mapping process, this means a very formal process governed by workshops to collect input, followed by detailed plans for incorporation of common elements into the roadmap for a standard, such as the materials and documentation recorded about a 3GPP Rel 12 RAN workshop (http://www.3gpp.org/news-events/3gpp-news/1266-Future-Radio-in-3GPP) Time and effort the organization is prepared to invest in the process. Position of the organization in the industry. Companies in leadership positions may like to publish their roadmaps in all channels and help shape the future and get their followers to align to the same. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Also the form in which the roadmaps could be expressed also varies a lot, depending on existing organizational practices and some of the factor |
s mentioned above, such as: Some roadmaps could be captured as simple textual statements describing the intent of the company to develop features in particular areas. Roadmaps could also be expressed in a graphical format with timelines expressed on an X axis and features and impacts being shown on a y axis. Figure 4-1, the roadmap depicting the Internet of Things, is an example of a graphical roadmap. TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP: THE INTERNET OF THINGS Software agents and advanced sensor fusion Technology Reach Miniaturization power- efficient electronics, and available spectrum Teleoperation and telepresence Ability to monitor and control distant objects Ability of devices located Physical-World indoors to receive geolocation signals Locating people and everyday objects Cost reduction leading Ubiquitous Positioning to diffusion into 2nd wave of applications Surveillance, security, healthcare, transport food safety, document Demand for expedited management logistics Vertical-Market Applications RFID tags for facilitating routing, inventorying and loss prevention Supply-Chain Helpers Source: SRI Consulting Business Intelligence Figure 4-1. Internet of Things roadmap Most commonly though, roadmaps tend to get developed and communicated through a set of slides or documents giving a detailed list of features like the different versions of the product, as well as showing the timelines and a graphical representation of the targets for the features through their impact. In spite of the differences in the ways roadmaps may get developed, represented, and communicated, most roadmaps should adhere to some standard maxims or implicit requirements about them. The most important requirement for any roadmap is that it should be able to address the different needs of different stakeholders to get sufficient information in sufficient detail. What we mean here is that for those stakeholders who are very interested to understand the features of a particular release of the product, the roadmap should indicate in very good detail the items |
covered by the release and what features may be coming up in a short amount of time. This is what we call high fidelity near view. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Some stakeholders may be more interested in looking at the roadmap with a slightly longer timeline reference. Although they are still interested to know the items that are to be part of the roadmap, they are comfortable with a lack of specific details, and this is what we call medium fidelity medium view. Last but not least, some stakeholders, such as customers who are very important industry-level players, could be more interested in what comes into the product roadmap with a long time range in mind, which would give them important inputs about the following aspects. Evaluation of the product roadmap against some industry or technology roadmap. Give indicators about the seriousness of the organization to pursue a long-term vision for the product. Ensure that they don't get tied into a product that could limit opportunities for future growth and expansion plans, which they may want to evaluate in a partnership mode, for instance. is understood that such a view of the roadmap may not offer any details at all and could very well remain abstract and at a high level, and this is what we refer to as high level, fuzzy abstract long view. When we talk about fidelity in the following sections, we mean to tie these term to the accuracy with which roadmaps are being described. fi.del.i.ty Exact correspondence with fact or with a given quality, condition, or event; accuracy. The American Heritage Dictionary In the context of this chapter, high fidelity implies higher accuracy and specificity that is being targeted in a roadmap. This would depend on the period over which such accuracy is being planned, communicated, and executed. In the following sections, we'll look at some aspects of this to understand the different views and their granularity through examples. High Fidelity Near View What does a near term view of a technology roadmap look like? What is the level of d |
etail that is expected to be available from such a view? What is the duration such a view should ideally be meant to cover? Let's tackle the last question first. In most cases, a near view is about the now. What are the features present in the product (manifested by the technology) as of "now"? If the product is bought now or in the near future, what should be expected from the product? Those would be the expectations to be satisfied by a high fidelity near view. Most product sheets of available products should give the high fidelity view of the roadmap. In some cases, if there is no update planned to the product in terms of a new release, the near view could even be the current feature set supported by the product. As an example, let's look at the 3GPP technical roadmap planning for different releases starting from Rel 8-Introduction of LTE, as shown in Table 4-1 (http://www.3gpp.org/specifications/releases) CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Table 4-1. 3GPP Roadmap Planning Release Spec Version Number Functional Freeze Date Rel-13 13.x.y March 2016 Rel-12 12.x.y September 2014 Rel-11 11.x.y June 2013 Rel-10 10.x.y June 2011-Introduction of LTE-Advanced Rel-9 9.x.y December 2009 Rel-8 8.x.y December 2008-Introduction of LTE It is interesting to note the caveats that 3GPP places along with this roadmap information: After a release is frozen, no new content can be added, but protocol specifications may still not be complete-in simpler terms, the what part of the release may be finalized, but details about implementation may still be under work. Different parts of specification version numbers can be incremented for different reasons and the "y" part is only for a flawed implementation of a specification version. Now that the roadmap items are available, one may want to look at what content is available as per Rel 11, slated to be complete by June 2013 (which will be the nearest planned release at the time of writing of this chapter). To do this, the roadmap should provide a way to obtain a detailed view of items, which 3G |
if the vendor quotes compliance to 3GPP Rel 11 in some upcoming version of the product. Medium Fidelity Medium View Now it should be relatively easier to understand what a medium fidelity view should be covering. The duration should be long enough that it covers not just the features planned for the technology in the immediate future, but also for some time in the future. It could be argued that anyone interested in how the roadmap will affect the immediate future (of any commitments that they make) and more would be interested in a medium fidelity view of the same, covering maybe a year or more. It could vary depending on the technology and how soon the business changes roll out, of course. The information graphic in Figure 4-2 gives an idea about medium fidelity medium view in the sense that: It talks about items to be worked on in the next few years (indicated, but not mentioned in the graphic). It also informs about some technology drivers that could be targeted (e.g., data rates up to 500Mbps speeds in uplink, 1Gb/s with low mobility, support for bandwidth of up to 100Mhz). LTE-Advanced roadmap (in mid-2010) Support for wider Bandwidth Relay functionality (up to 100 MHz) Cell edge coverage improvement Downlink transmission Efficiency improvements in rural schemes area coverage Improvements using 8x8 MIMO COMP (coordinated multiple High mobility data rates of 100 point transmission and Mbps and Low mobility data reception) rates of 1 GBps In Downlink and uplink Uplink transmission schemes Others Up to 500 Mbps data rates Local IP Access (LIPA) and Enhanced HNB for traffic offload Figure 4-2. Medium fidelity medium view roadmap example CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS It should also be noted, however, that some of the items indicated in the medium view will overlap with the low fidelity view as they are describing the same roadmap in different ways and would depend on the viewpoint of the reader. Low Fidelity, Fuzzy Abstract Long View As a standard roadmap view, any single picture or graph that tries to capture all |
of the information to be made available in a technology roadmap across different years tends to give a low fidelity, fuzzy abstract long view. The following observations of such a view will make things clearer before we revisit the same with an example: The duration covered by such a view could very well be a few years or more (like the next decade). It is low fidelity, as the accuracy associated with the items listed, being part of the actual technology down the line, is also pretty low. During such long time periods, it should be observed that the roadmap will have items that have more to do with forecasting and speculative positioning than what the markets and consumers would be wanting at those time periods. It is also clear that the expected commitment level to the items listed in such a view is pretty low. Hence, it would not be a surprise if items listed in a five-year plan do not actually make their way to the technology in those five years. The roadmap in Figure 4-3 from 3GPP is one such low fidelity roadmap view, which gives a summary of how different features were introduced over the years and gives information on what is planned for the next two years (at that time, in 2010). Access Technology releases All IP core Services HSPA+ LTE Advanced Figure 4-3. Example of a low fidelity long view roadmap CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS The high level view shown in Figure 4-4 gives more information on how the network capabilities are intended to evolve over time. Although it does not give much information on exact timelines, it is interesting for the discussion here. One can see here that speeds of 1000Mb/s are planned to be achieved in the roadmap, with LTE-Advanced in the future. Availability of Standards Edge + 384 Kbps 1Mbps W-CDMA HSPA+ 384 Kbps 18 Mbps 42 Mbps LTE-Advanced 100 Mbps 1000 Mbps Figure 4-4. Example of a high level view roadmap What Is a Network Roadmap? Briefly stated, a network roadmap provides information about how a network is planned to evolve over time, from a given position, referenced by v |
arious attributes that comprise the aspects of the network under evolution, so that a set of goals could be met or a vision for the network could be achieved. The items that could be covered in such a roadmap could vary based on the network under discussion and the organization that is planning the roadmap, as in: Physical aspects of the network, such as the different network elements that make up the network and their capabilities Characteristics of the network performance Services offered by the network Users or subscribers of the network Different devices that are supported by the network and their capabilities Aspects of end-user visible performance of the network like, for example, user-experienced speeds in downlink and uplink for an operator deploying an LTE network Implementation aspects of the network, such as the transport layer and whether the transport will be ipv4 or ipv6 CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Nonfunctional aspects of the network, such as security, availability, reliability, or administration Ability of the network to integrate with other existing networks Before we go any further, let's look at a small illustration of a network roadmap, courtesy of the Georgia Tech Research Network. Although the roadmap itself was published in 2010, what is of interest here are the elements that are visible. The roadmap itself is accessible eathttp://www.oit.gatech.edu/initiatives/network-roadmap. The guiding vision for the network is explained (excerpted below) so it is easier to understand the context in which the roadmap and the items under progress are presented. For any organization, it is important to have a clearly defined vision for the network itself, even if this is also expressed in terms of business goals. [T]he purpose of the Georgia Tech network has been to provide a strategic resource and sustained competitive advantage to the Institute as an educational and research enterprise, and to our faculty, students, and staff. For the last two decades, Georgia Tech and OIT have provided instrumental lead |
ership in regional, national, and international high-performance networks for research and education. Office of Information Technology, Georgia Tech, Network Roadmap 2010 The current status of the network is summarized later, and this is also an important aspect. Before the future proposals for the network can be understood, one should know where the network stands currently in terms of scope, connectivity, and operations status. Also an executive summary is made available to explain the overall directions for the roadmap. This is important in multiple ways: The summary provides a high-level view of items that are taken into consideration for making the roadmap. Without getting into too much technical detail, the reader could get an overall picture of the roadmap directions. The summary could also help the reader understand that not all goals expressed are actually planned to be achieved in the same roadmap duration, and some goals could be achieved through multiple steps (when the detailed roadmap is perused). The "Executive Summary Overall Direction" from Georgia Tech states: Network expansion and enhancement to reflect the state-of-the-art and to accommodate the Institute's strategic goals and developing academic, research, and business needs Focus on faculty and research enablement Enhancements in disaster recovery and redundancy options locally and globally Network and firewall equipment refreshment on a 5-7 year cycle Wireless network coverage throughout the entire footprint of our campuses, indoors and outdoors Leveraging of automation, scaling, self-service, monitoring/measurement, and change management Proactive evaluation and implementation of best practices and technologies for network integrity Evaluation and piloting of new technologies in preparation for future deployment, needs, and opportunities CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS From this summary, we can discern multiple items that will be emphasized later in terms of generic influences on a network roadmap, such as: Fundamental purpose of the network to |
achieve the institute's strategic goals Key functions like faculty and research enablement Nonfunctional requirements (disaster recovery, redundancy) that are covered Directions on network coverage for the campus Network management and monitoring abilities Security aspects of the network and equipment (firewalls) Ongoing activities to evaluate and pilot options The roadmap itself, with activities planned for the network, are mentioned in bar chart format in terms of the actions and timelines, as excerpted in Table 4-3. Table 4-3. Planned Activities for a Network FY2010 GOALS: (Partially Funded) Increase to 75% deployment of 10/100/1000 to the desktop Increase to 60% deployment of 10GigE to campus buildings Network Admission Control (NAC) pilot (802.1x) for campus networks Ongoing IPv6 pilot for campus networks with improved services and performance Next generation firewall technology evaluation and pilot Multicast deployment to campus networks DNS upgraded to distributed anycast servers; transition to distributed Bluecat appliance infrastructure Excerpted from Office of Information Technology, Georgia Tech, Network Roadmap 2010 So it can be seen that as an organization, the definition of a network roadmap and keeping it up to date and alive could play a very important role in meeting business objectives and making all stakeholders aware of how progress on the roadmap is being made. Also as an LTE operator there are a wide range of parameters to think about and plan for the network at the macro level. When we discuss parameters, we do not mean the deployment and fine-tuning parameters that we discussed in earlier chapters, but rather the higher-level options that could help to better plan the network for the operator. Network Options Why should an operator consider network options as part of the roadmap strategy? The very simple answer is that finding options in the network gives the operator more leverage into the network realization and multiple paths to achieve the business goals. An example is provided in Fig |
ure 4-5. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS E-UTRAN ((q)) ((p)) ((q)) Signals Traffic Figure 4-5. Aspects of network flow Under network options, the following aspects need to be given due consideration: Aspects related to physical network in terms of the air interface: Bandwidth to be deployed Access technology being used (FDD/TDD) Aspects related to the eNodeB being deployed, as in: Cells supported by the eNodeB Antennae and MIMO capabilities of the eNodeB Aspects related to interconnections between the eNodeB: Ability to implement X2 interface Effectiveness of the radio resource management algorithms Additional capabilities related to self-management of the resources such as SON (like) capabilities Support for handovers for the user equipment with other networks (3G, 2G, etc.) Implementation options for the ePC: Whether multiple physical nodes are implemented to support MME: security gateway (SGW), and packet data network gateway (PGW) nodes The kind of roaming access is supported and required for the network in question How the protocols S1-C, S1-U, S5, S6, S11 are implemented CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS User equipment classes and types to be supported: Devices that consume the LTE service and nature of mobility Definition of different types of users to be supported Note Some aspects related to the user equipment and types of users also overlap with the definition of usage models, as explained in the section below. Deployment Options Under deployment options, the operator must meaningfully think about actual steps by which deployment could proceed. Hence, it could make sense for the operator to mull the actual sequence of deployment over time, or with the physical necessities of deployment in terms of coexistence of the solution with other existing options and avenues for the targeted consumer. The following are some options that could be exercised by the operator: Positioning of the network in terms of size, as in Macro, Pico, Micro, or Femto cell network Number of users supported by the network as capacity during dif |
ferent phases so the investment need not be huge upfront Coverage planning for the network: Will it be a greenfield (fresh and independent) network? Will it be deployed as an overlay with other existing 3G or 2G cells? Locations that will be deployed first as part of a deployment strategy: Will a tough location with lots of users and variable traffic be chosen as the first cell location to help understand the ability of the system to tackle load and observe system performance degradation? Will easier locations with not too very challenging capacity or system dynamics be chosen to start deployment, to help tune the network parameters before venturing into tougher and more demanding cell locations? Services supported by the network: Will all services be enabled from the start or will the deployment start with the most important business essential services and branch out to other additional services later? Will certain services be supported in one's own network like VoLTE or will initial deployments support voice by handing off to other networks to enable staggered investments? Will operation and maintenance components be enabled from the start and what capabilities from the following will be enabled and when? Logging and monitoring of service availability Remote management of network elements, including automatic restart and reconfiguration Automatic system performance tuning CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Usage Models Every operator has to invest considerable attention to how the elements of users, services, subscriptions, applications, and traffic shape up in the network that is being deployed. Defining models of usage for the same and the key performance indicators (KPIs) of the network with which they are tracked gives the operator much needed information and a framework to analyze directions intended for the network and assess performance of the same. In the category of devices, the following classification could be used: Handheld devices Smart phones With or without touchscreen and usage with data, applications B |
asic phones With voice only and basic SMS capabilities Tablets/Phablets Laptops With integrated modems (internal) With external modems (USB based) Using smartphones as modems for access to network Mobility of the devices could also determine usage patterns, as in: Access with no mobility (fixed laptops) Access with limited or localized mobility (within home or small areas) Access with low mobility (mobility in a car or low-speed transport, including by walking) Access with high mobility (higher speeds of travel, implying more complicated processing requirements from the network) Communication channel end points could be based on entity-dictated aspects of the processing, as in: Person-to-person communication (voice, SMS, MMS) Person-to-machine communication (online banking, entering data via phone) Machine to machine communications (phones registering for location updates, analytics and data collection, traffic monitoring applications) This is also important in profiling and modeling of usage based on the types of applications being used, as in: Social applications (presence, Facebook communication, notifications, Twitter) Gaming (online and multiplayer) Business applications (VPN, online applications, corporate network applications) Voice and multimedia communication applications (voice conferencing, video conferencing, chat) Entertainment (music, movies, video download) Personal e-mail CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Instant messaging Content sharing (photos, video, music, file upload) Search services (location based content, need-based search, directories) KPIs need to be defined and tracked so as to understand the impact on the system due to the above-listed reasons and these may be: Tracking of resources: acquire, usage, and allocation: Physical layer resources Network layer resources Core network resources Turnaround time from the initiation of a request to the network and completion of the same Mobility statistics Time taken for location updates Number and types of location updates Handover statistics Number of |
handovers initiated and successful Classifications for failures and reasons Time taken for handovers Service disruptions caused during handovers QoS monitoring of: Admitted bandwidths against actual provided bandwidths (how much of the ensured requests were processed successfully) Requests for downgrading or upgrading of bandwidths (how many users and services were needing updates) Maximum bandwidths allocated against actual usage (how many resources are being used per allocation) Servicing of users based on priority Gold class users (highest priority premium users) Silver class users (medium priority users) Bronze class users (lowest priority users) What Influences Network Roadmap Planning? In the preceding section, we briefly investigated network options that could play a role in evolving your network roadmaps. Also, we saw different deployment options that could determine how the roadmap gets solidified. Finally, we also saw aspects of usage models that need to be understood to visualize how the network roadmap can be analyzed and how different data points could be tracked in terms of performance indicators necessary to determine the current and future path of network roadmap evolution. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS This section will explain the influences on the network roadmap from different perspectives. We will explain the impact on the roadmap from key stakeholders' perspective and how they may influence the roadmap. Also, we will also examine factors that influence the roadmap in terms of technology, usage, among others. Then we will discuss disruptive factors that need to be factored in to make sure that the roadmap does not suffer from materialization of such risks. Key Stakeholders for Roadmap Inputs The initial sections of this chapter discussed technology roadmap planning. From that you learned about the need for a technology roadmap, methods by which it can be evolved, and the different levels of visibility a roadmap could provide to satisfy expectations for different stakeholders. This section exami |
nes the impact of stakeholders on network roadmaps. We will explain the motivation of each of the stakeholders and how they influence the roadmap planning. This section should prove useful to help you understand the complexities of roadmap planning and to factor in inputs from such key stakeholders and manage their expectations. Business Business ownership normally rests with people responsible for business development in the company. These would be those who are entrusted to have an innate understanding of the product domain and the market. They could be from marketing, sales, or from product line management. Also, they are likely to be knowledgeable of different trends in different markets as targeted by the company with their product. Note It should be clear as to who has the responsibility for business ownership for your product. It is always a good idea to make this explicit, even in cases where the responsibility may be distributed. What kind of inputs could one expect from such business owners that could influence the roadmap planning? Broadly speaking, the business owner may have inputs to the roadmap based on following lines: Business development plans Proof of concepts or demonstration inputs Inputs on end-of-life decisions Portfolio development decisions based on investment plans Inputs on timing of particular releases Business development plans are normally based on how the product is placed and performing in different markets. To move a product from an established market or geographic area to newer markets (which could even involve newer countries or continents) may require certain specific features to be addressed by the product. For example, one decision could be that the network roadmap necessarily needs to involve support for a TDD duplexing method to be able to deploy it in a large market like China. Even in this regard, it is the duty of the business owner to clearly define the scope or extent of the feature support required within a definite timeframe to make the business plan fruitful. CHAPTE |
R 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Many sales and marketing ideas meet with customers' needs and are sometimes planned based on demonstrating the capabilities of the product. Although in many cases this implies a demonstration based on existing capabilities of the product in the current network, in many cases increasing it implies showing some proof of concept of a certain feature. Although the feature may not completely work as per the field definitions, it would be defined to show some capabilities of the feature in question to convince the customer about capabilities of the product. Business inputs about when such proof of concept demonstrations are needed are vital to the network roadmap. Also, in the telecom industry in particular, many product launches and feature demonstrations are planned to be unveiled in noted symposiums attended by vendors and customers alike. Businesses should give input about which features are planned for such demonstrations so they can be part of the network roadmap. For example, every year, many product launches are planned for the Barcelona Mobile World Congress held in Spain. So the network roadmap must be planned to incorporate development of the feature to be ready in time for the planned demo. When it is time to stop supporting some features or options for the product, this call should come from product management. Businesses should assess the impact of not supporting a particular feature in terms of the effect on the customer base and actual usage. It is also the onus of business development to communicate such decisions to key customers and ensure their acceptance is received. It is most likely that such end-of-life decisions will be turned into opportunities to push support for newer platforms or upgraded features by product management when they interact with customers, old and new. Typically, organizations get a limited amount of money as a budget to work their business plans. Deciding how this budget will be allocated for product development and which features get prioritized into the |
roadmap is a call the business has to make. It is the prerogative of the business personnel to work out the return on an investment and align the decisions to the overall strategy of the company for that particular planning year. Also, as discussed previously, business development also has a say on when major milestones get planned in the roadmap. This may include deployment of new features on the network or the availability of new releases to the customers. This could also include timing of some upgrades for customer networks. A primary reason for this could be to ensure business commitments for some customers that are met within certain quarters so the revenue from the customer can be recognized for the same idea. This would help align the product with financial goals to be achieved by the company and help to meet or exceed them. In summary, business development personnel play a critical role in roadmap planning and implementation. They need to be properly represented in roadmap development and need to have an active say in the decisions that are made. The profitability of the product is owned by business stakeholders, and ensuring their representation and involvement goes a long way in making sure the roadmap helps the product and, in turn, helps the company deliver value in a planned manner. Customers Some skeptic may ask whether customers really need to be involved in the roadmap development. Some of them may be doing so armed with the following seemingly valid line of reasoning: It isn't our job to learn how business development is supposed to interact with customers and ensure their requirements are properly represented. If business development does its job well, why would we need to get customer representation and interaction as part of the roadmap planning? Even when business development represents customers, it is good to maintain focus on specific requirements from customers and record them in such a way that when the roadmap gets enhanced further, these inputs act as markers to ensure the customer in |
put does not get invalidated. One of the prime reasons for this is that, depending on the size of the product and time taken for roadmap development, which may again depend on the number of stakeholders involved, we may be talking about a process that could take from weeks to months to complete. In such times, when customer requirements are not properly represented, some of them may get overlooked in further development. It helps to make explicit note of certain customer commitments that need to be fulfilled by the roadmap and also to ensure that when decisions need to be made in between the selection of features for the roadmap, these customers are kept apprised of the impact. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Primary inputs from customers for roadmap planning include mainly the need for specific features to be deployed to help customers meet certain requirements. For example, support for E-TM Transmission Mode self-tests may be needed to meet regulatory requirements. In addition to these features, however, additional customer input, as list below, is also quite important to ensure that the roadmap covers all of the necessary aspects required by the customer. These could also be considered indirect inputs for roadmap planning, which could help explain the gaps in this information and also help tune the plan: Specific requirements toward quality assurance of the product and the network. This may depend on the kinds of interoperability tests customers expect the product to go through. This would need to be planned in product development or in early customer testing. Time taken toward integration of the product with all equipment at the customer's premises so that product releases can be planned in time for demonstrations that need to happen on specific dates. Specific interdependence and interoperability requirements toward hardware and software components the product needs to work in the customer's networks; support for these needs to be planned in the roadmap. Roadmaps that the customer shares with their end users, whe |
re available, would provide good input for planning the product's roadmap. This would help the product go beyond meeting what is stated to be customer's input, but also help ensure the customer's needs are satisfied. These steps could be made to work where there is one customer or a few major customers who are primary recipients of the product under development. What could be interesting though is if the product is positioned in such a way that it is planned to be used by a set of users who are too numerous to be targeted individually in the manner described to collect their inputs. How are inputs to be collected for roadmap development in such a scenario? In fact, many products may fall into such categories where they have the distinct need to target possible customers who may not even be signed up for the product. In cases where the product has a wide variety of users to cater to, it would be valuable to do end-user modeling. Such user categorization could then be used to associate with specific requirements or features that are part of the roadmap, which can be recorded in the form of user stories or use cases or user scenarios. Users could be modeled in terms of: Usage profile of the product (e.g., in terms of amount of data used) Applications used by the user (e.g., business and corporate applications, home entertainment) Age profile of the users Note Some inputs related to user categorization can also be derived from the discussion earlier in this chapter where product usage has been covered in more detail. Another way of capturing enough end-user input from customers is by using the technique of customer representatives or customer surrogates. As part of roadmap development, one could have representatives for customers or for specific customer roles and gather inputs from these. These could be real people who are playing roles of customers from outside the product organization. Business representatives could also play the roles of customer surrogates to ensure that they provide valid and vital input that c |
ould be required to finalize the roadmap. These sessions could provide frames of reference for certain features as well as answer some critical questions from the development organization to help develop a valid roadmap. Engagement of such surrogates could be an ongoing process to ensure vital and valid input is received throughout the product development lifecycle, not just during the roadmap development phase. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Customer Support Representatives There is yet another group of stakeholders who constantly interact with customers and who are primed to give further input to the product roadmap. These are the personnel who perform the role of customer support. Such customer support representatives bring valid input to the product roadmap in terms of: Issues faced by customers during different phases of the product deployment: Initial deployment Installation Monitoring and control Support for field issues Critical feature input that could help make successful customer deployments a reality Vital input from competitor products that are deployed to the customers, which could indicate parts where the current product roadmap is found lacking Prioritized history of key "Asks" from the customers that have not been fulfilled, the value of which may be pretty high from the customer's perspective Critical issues logged in the product defect log from the field as reported by customers Customer support representatives bring a further dimension to the product roadmap apart from explicit input received from business and customers. These inputs, when channeled and triaged well, give good indicators as to how the product is performing in the field and what critical aspects of the product roadmap need to be improved to ensure greater success for the product. Ignoring such inputs could mean any of the following impacts to the product and roadmap: Increasing number of issues from deployments Deployments taking longer time periods than planned Increased costs of product development Poor customer satisfaction and |
hence poor customer retention Poor perception of product quality in the industry Reduced viability of entering newer markets and impairment in capability to introduce newer features successfully into the roadmap and in the field Known Factors This section will explain more about the impact of different known factors on network roadmaps. Technology When we discuss the impact of technology, we have to consider a couple of aspects here. The first is that when we consider impacts of technology, we must also consider the technology used to implement the product. The second is that the product also makes available a technology to its customers and users that should also be evaluated when the roadmaps are defined. Here, we consider the impacts in terms of both aspects on the roadmap. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Implementation technology tends to get chosen pretty early in the product development cycle and most often tends to age badly. Such technology tends to feel like an albatross around the product's neck, limiting the scope of improvements achievable in the product. The following factors could help a business know if parts of implementation technology need an overhaul: Are the tools used in the product development still current? Have any of the software packages reached their end of life? Are there issues seen in the field or during testing that cannot be fixed as the implementation technology inherently has these issues (or so goes the root cause analysis)? When new features get implemented, does development most often take more time than planned due to gaps discovered in the implementation? Do security scans done on the product highlight outdated packages that cause vulnerabilities in the product? Are there any performance requirements from customers that simply cannot be met with the current product architecture? If your answer was yes to even some of these questions, you should consider an upgrade to the product's technology one of the important aspects in the roadmap. A business should see this as an investment |
in the product's development to help it achieve further success and not get crippled as newer features are developed. Of course, overhauling the implementation technology need not be done in one all-or-nothing swoop if it is determined that it poses risks to the roadmap. The parts that make up the technology could be carefully analyzed to make a phased transition to more current technologies, in smaller increments, while making sure that the functionality that is already implemented is not broken. This needs some very careful planning and execution and would require help from the people with the best knowledge of the product and the domain to make the transition successful. The second aspect of technology, the technology that is provided to the customers through the product, can be addressed through some of the following aspects: Interfaces exposed by the product to the end users, like: Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) Protocol-based command line or other standardized interfaces, like representational state transfer (REST) APIs Standards implemented by the product: Standards as prescribed by 3GPP, ITU-T Other RFCs for specific parts like implementation of session initiation protocol (SIP) Operational procedures required to: Install Update Upgrade Troubleshoot the product All of these aspects should be evaluated against expectations; not only those that are explicitly stated in the requirements, but also those that are implicitly required by customers and other stakeholders to be part of the product. Inadequacies should be addressed by the product roadmap to make sure the product stays competitive. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Financial As connected as our world is today, finance plays a big role in impacting business decisions. Financial markets are all linked together globally to make every event of importance a global one. Investment climates tend to get very gloomy in such scenarios. This in turn would imply that global recessions are periods to be noted with great interest by business owners. During global melt |
downs, decisions to buy are delayed or canceled. A roadmap needs to accommodate the impacts of such financial situations to account for possibilities of network rollouts getting delayed, plan for contingencies where dependent and supplies may be impacted, and take into account that revenue realizations may be delayed. The company's financial health also affects the product development and, in turn, the roadmap. Financial health as measured by the cash on hand of the company is an indicator that customers would be interested in knowing. Depending on the money associated with an account, the company should be convinced it has enough capital to manage the requirements of the contract. In turn, the contrary also holds good. Poor cash position of a company could imply that some business opportunities are lost. This in turn affects the roadmap performance. Business owners tend to be cognizant of such positions and ensure that the cash position of the company is in alignment with the roadmap planned. Geopolitical There are also geopolitical issues to consider. To understand this better, we make a few introductions and also attempt to associate some of the recent events to the same. Ge.o.poli.tics A combination of geographic and political factors relating to or influencing a nation or region. American Heritage Dictionary Ge o pol I ti cal (Physical Geography) of or relating to geopolitics; involving geographical and political elements. Collins English Dictionary The following aspects related to geopolitical influences need to be accommodated for in the planning of the network roadmap and also in terms of the impacts that they may have on the execution of the roadmap: Political climate prevailing in the region under scrutiny, as in: Threat of war breaking out. For example, the aggressive intent and escalations shown by North Korea in the fourth quarter of 2013, where there were expectations of impending declaration of war on South Korea. Instabilities in the government in operation that could make acts of conducting busin |
esses challenging. Regulations and embargoes that could be sanctioned and invalidate business decisions planned to be executed. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Formation of new nation-states and changing control over certain regions. With some nations, there are repeating seasonal periods of distrust and demonstration of disaffection. Governments could also formulate newer regulations to affect certain demographies. An example is when the U.S. government changed the norms for visa applications accepted from certain regions like India. Impacts due to seasonal climatic conditions experienced in a place or region, for example, not scheduling rollouts when an area is set to experience seasonal storms. Regulatory Regulatory aspects that could impact the roadmap include the following: Requirements introduced by the government to which products and roadmaps must adhere. For example, mobile towers should control their radiation levels to be within certain regulatory limits. Hence, the network roadmap should not only accommodate to functionally operate within the desired levels, but also allow for monitoring and reporting of the emission levels of the product. Features required to be deployed as per provisions in some contracts as conducted by the service providers. Requirements to be able to support call tracing and lawful interception if so required by government agencies. Earthquake and tsunami warning system may be mandatorily regulated in a place prone to suffer the same calamities, such as in Japan. The network roadmap would need to incorporate input related to such regulatory requirements to be able to remain current and valid. Standards Impact on the roadmap from standards is very direct and straightforward. The standards define the features that need to be supported to conform to a release and hence give direct input to the roadmap. As explained previously, standards' bodies are driven by different groups involved with different aspects of the technology. Hence, by participating in the technology definition, companies |
can make a stake for future business revenues from implementing these features. Also, for the same reason, organizations tend to push features that are developed with lesser cost in their product into the standards to make them mandatory for competitors to catch up to. Developing features in the product roadmap before they become part of standards could be beneficial in driving home competitive advantage to the product and company developing the same. Disruptive (Risk) Factors All projects are subject to risks. All businesses are also operating under a set of risks. Risks could be positive or negative. A positive risk could actually be turned into an advantage to the project and help the project benefit from it. Note The Project Management Institute has a very good set of guidelines on risk management as a knowledge area for those more interested in a detailed study of the topic. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS In the context of roadmap development, a positive risk could be allowed to develop and occur. This would help accelerate the roadmap implementation or multiply the business benefits that are associated with the roadmap. More commonly though, roadmaps are subject to negative risk factors, some of which we explain briefly below. Disasters The United Nations defined disaster as: A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society. Disasters involve widespread human, material, economic or environmental impacts, which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Disasters could be categorized into the following types: Natural disasters: These are events categorized as acts of nature, such as floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, among others. They could have a primary impact via the natural occurrence and they could also have a secondary impact due to damages or situations caused by the natural disaster. The 2004 tsunami triggered in the Indian Ocean by an undersea mega thrust earthquake is one suc |
h example of a natural disaster, affecting Asian countries of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. Environmental emergencies: These include widespread impact caused on the environment due to technological or industrial accidents, including use and transport of hazardous material. Examples of this include the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which began in the Gulf of Mexico, following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Complex emergencies: These involve situations of civil unrest and breakdown of governance or authority, including situations of war and political uncertainty. We have covered some of these earlier in the chapter. Pandemic emergencies: These include situations of rapid spread of infectious diseases that affect population, livelihood, businesses, and economies in some cases. For example, the H1N1 swine flu and the avian influenza or bird flu caused widespread damage to poultry, livestock, and human population. Impacts have been seen on businesses, livelihoods, poultry export, and tourism. Disasters tend to have multiple levels of impact in terms of timelines, starting from the immediate effects on the aftermath of the disaster to long-ranging issues that last for years and decades in some cases. Disaster risk management is defined as: The systematic process of using administrative directives, organizations, and operational skills and capacities to implement strategies, policies and improved coping capacities in order to lessen the adverse impacts of hazards and the possibility of disaster. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Let's look at what kind of influences to consider in order to accommodate such disasters into the process of roadmap planning: Disaster contingency planning and impacts to planned deployments in the roadmap: Roadmap planning can take into account probabilities of disaster occurrences and put in place a contingency plan for these. This plan could possibly include an agreed upon set of steps to take into accoun |
t if a disaster materializes, including roles and responsibilities of personnel. Operational implications during disasters: Networks need to be resilient to handle operations during disasters when parts of the network may be affected or are completely out of service. Enough planning and thought should be given to ensure resiliency of networks in such scenarios and to develop the ability to provide full or impaired functionality to customers during disaster impacted times. These could include the ability to do intelligent routing, selective service prioritization, and choosing reliability over high performance. Ability to support georedundancy in the product: Geographic redundancy is the ability to seamlessly switch functionality from one or more parts of the network to other redundant parts of the network SO end users of the system face minimal to no impact in functionality. Although this is a complex feature that depends on the complexity of the network and different types of nodes being deployed, when planned and implemented well, georedundancy could be a killer feature in highlighting the advantages of the product over other rivals. Early warning systems: Network roadmaps could be adjusted to accommodate features of an early warning system as required by customer or business inputs in accordance with standards. Backup and restore: In the event of disaster, how would parts of the network become operational again? What information needs to be saved by the system to be able to re-create the necessary service? Would the system be robust enough to recover operations and also allow for the restored system to be controlled via configuration and input to selectively recover operations? Roadmaps could incorporate features that support required functionality, ensuring support for backup and restore at the levels required by the network. Redundancies at different levels: Power redundancy: How does the network use power? What sources of power are used? How long will the system operate if there is a power failure? Should i |
mprovement to this be considered as part the network roadmap? What would be the cost of such improvements? Hardware redundancy: What happens to the network nodes and operations in case of hardware failure? What are the impacts of failures of different units and how does the same impact end-user-visible functionality? One could use techniques like failure mode effect analysis to assess impacts of different failures and which failures need to handled as part of the roadmap. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Cyber Attacks Security is worth lots of money. Any transaction that passes through any network is susceptible to many attacks. Some of these data are directly related to financial transactions, including bank and business transaction. Securing such data implies financial security. A secure network has many implications: It implies customers do not fear for personal data Secure networks ensure e-commerce transactions can be done without fear Secure networks enable financial transactions, including money transfer to be made Secure networks translate to more productivity for users as they need not complete operations and transactions by physically being present in some place From the data presented in the 2012 workshop on Economics of information security, the following are the chief cyber crimes committed: Online banking fraud using malware: In a malware attack, malware is used to capture banking passwords, account numbers, and related data to get into the online banking accounts, after which the criminals proceed to steal money. Online banking fraud using phishing: In a phishing attack, criminals impersonate legal websites and create legally sounding entities to get unsuspecting users to share their personal banking information, including login, password, and account details. Other forms of online fraud: Some criminals use fraudulently obtained information about services for their personal gain utilizing business services without authorization and causing losses to the companies involved. For example, cyber criminals wh |
o hack and gather passcodes from conference service providers to use for their personal benefit. The network roadmap addresses such issues and helps secure the product in the following ways: Run a security scan on the product to detect security vulnerabilities. Requirements for updating different vulnerabilities could be prioritized and made part of the roadmap. Find security glitches that affect parts of the product and incorporate planned security patches as part of the roadmap. This would require enough planning and testing to ensure that functionality and features are not impacted. Actively monitor new security threats and information bulletins regarding these and proactively protect and update the product's technology to ensure that the security threats are handled. Ensure network redundancy options are enabled to be able to route calls and functionality through alternate network nodes when some nodes have been compromised or rendered ineffective by attacks. An example would be the concept of an MME pool that helps provide such redundancy along with load-balancing capabilities. Ensure new features do not introduce additional security vulnerabilities. CHAPTER 4 NETWORK ROADMAPS Engage a security consultancy to do a security audit of the product and the network, which could mean: Intensive testing of the system for attacks by simulating these Probing the system for vulnerabilities Strengthening security of the system by reviewing password policies Ensuring all protocols and communications are secure Also ensuring all paper systems surrounding the product are secure The resulting input would be features that could then make their way into the network roadmap to ensure a secure product that can withstand all threats. Summary We began this chapter by examining the need for technology roadmaps and how they can be formulated. We looked at different perspectives that such roadmaps can provide, and the level of detail that can be established in them. We then looked at Network Roadmaps and demonstrated how network opt |
ions, deployment options and usage models can be figured into them. We then analyzed the key stakeholders who provide roadmap input, and studied different factors influencing network roadmaps, including disruptive factors, as well. Roadmaps are a very powerful tool to develop network capabilities in a planned manner. Developing expertise in defining and delivering network roadmaps goes a long way toward consistently deploying successful networks. CHAPTER 5 Network Roadmap Evolution Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. The Origin of Species Charles Darwin After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years. I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic quarrels of the Romans. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon According to Darwin's Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. 'Lessons from Europe for American Business -Leon C. Megginson Most living things, evolution experts point out, survive and flourish due to two critical factors. First, the organism is so exceptionally designed for its environment that it continues to flourish in spite of many changes that push other organisms out o |
f business; sharks and crocodiles fall under this category. Second, the organism is capable of changes in its genetic code to select traits and maximize abilities that give it an advantage for surviving in the environment. Such organisms that show adaptability continue to evolve and flourish. It is only natural to extend this phenomenon to organizations in comparing their origins, evolution, and continual growth in a stretch of organic thinking. Continuing on the same vein, while we could expect networks, superior by design, to survive forever, it is only logical to plan the way for which networks could evolve. This chapter examines in detail some of the ways in which network evolution can be planned. Network resilience is one such tool that could help us understand the aspects of the network that need to be planned for toward evolution. It could also help us to deal with further changes in the industry, which could include both sudden unplanned changes and those that could be anticipated based on industry trends. As discussed in Chapter 4, careful planning and alignment of future goals and services would help businesses and organizations to evolve in the best manner possible. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Later in this chapter, we'll also look at organizational factors that could keep the network viable and operational. This would include having response teams in place for any contingency in the network, making detailed and careful service and business continuity plans and executing them, and the ability to infuse radical thinking into the organization to help embrace changing scenarios and anticipate evolutionary requirements. We also discuss ways to measure the mutability and agility of the roadmaps to help planners find better tools to understand and track roadmap evolution. The primary goal of this chapter is to help you get a grasp on the aspects of network roadmap evolution that matter and introduce tools that could be used to assess and analyze these. This will be useful in putting in place a proces |
s for network roadmap evolution, which we will discuss in detail in the next chapter. Planned Evolution This section will discuss techniques of testing the resilience of the network and what the results of the testing can tell us about the network. This would expose the gaps in the roadmap and help you take steps to evolve the roadmap to address those gaps in a planned manner. Also we will explain how reactive evolution can result from sudden changes and how changes can be anticipated. Network Resilience What is meant by resilience? What does it take for an entity to be resilient? re-sil-ience The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Resilience is denoted by the ability to be able to recover quickly from events or external forces that may cause disruption. A similar description is very much applicable to network resilience. Just as different things are innately perceived to have varying abilities of resilience, experts have found that networks too need to be designed and built to be resilient. In an age where all networks are interconnected and most systems run out of the network, the system is as strong as its weakest link, which in this case could be any part of the network that is prone to attacks or disruptions, both natural and manmade. Failures and faults that could cripple the network or add to downtime are most certainly going to cause huge losses to different entities in following ways: Loss of revenue to the business due to failures in network and penalty clauses about availability Loss of trust in the quality of the network's ability to survive failures and thwart future attacks Disruption of operations and services to operators running businesses out of the network Disruptions to customers and end users who may be running real-time and life critical operations from services provided by the network With the increasing number of services and applications being hosted on the Cloud, disruptions to |
a network could imply denial of all those vital services and applications. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION J.P.G. Sterbenz et al. define resilience for networks as follows: [We define] resilience as the ability of the network to provide and maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of various faults and challenges to normal operation. Resilience and Survivability in Communication Networks: Strategies, Principles, and Survey of Disciplines -J.P.G. Sterbenz et al. (2010) Although resilience is defined based on a network's ability to provide and maintain an acceptable level of service, survivability of the network is also an equally important aspect and is defined as follows by P. Cholda et al.: [Network survivability is the] Quantified ability of a system, subsystem, equipment, process, or procedure to continue to function during and after a natural or man-made disturbance. A Survey of Resilience Differentiation Frameworks in Communication Networks - P. Cholda et al. So what are the disciplines on which network resilience can be analyzed? The fundamental concept that governs the ideas within the resilience domain are driven by the fault error failure chain, as shown in Figure 5-1. Fault could be any inherent Fault weakness in the system, accidental or by design Error is any observable difference Error in the value of a state, different from the expected state, visible in the system due to triggering of a fault Failure is the result of an error where the Failure expected service is not provided by the system not working as per expectation Figure 5-1. The fault error failure link CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION The rate at which dormant faults are exploited to become errors and observable errors become failures in the system can be limited by defenses built into the network. Also, by systematically improving the complete communication channel, the ability of the network to provide end-to-end connectivity to users is improved. This is disruption tolerance, also defined in following way: Disruption t |
olerance is the ability of a system to tolerate disruptions in connectivity among its components, consisting of the environmental challenges: weak and episodic channel connectivity, mobility, unpredictably-long delay, as well as tolerance of energy (or power) challenges. Resilience and Survivability in Communication Networks: Strategies, Principles, and Survey of Disciplines -J.P.G. Sterbenz et al. (2010) Disciplines of Network Resilience So how do we make the network more resilient? J.P.G. Sterbenz et al. classify the disciplines related to resilience under the following categories of challenge tolerance and trustworthiness: Challenge tolerance. As can be inferred, this relates to how the network continues to provide services on the face of challenges based on its design and engineering strengths. This could be broken down further into the following categories: Fault tolerance: Relating to the ability of the network to be able to handle and contain fault situations from escalating to system-level issues, leading to service disruptions. Relying primarily on redundancy techniques, fault tolerance can be seen as a way of handling noncorrelated fault events of limited scope. Survivability: A discipline that extends fault tolerance to more complicated scenarios where correlated fault events are being witnessed in the network. These could be malicious intentional coordinated efforts to bring the network down or an unintentional chain of events caused by large-scale disasters, both natural and manmade. Measures to define survivability have been suggested based on the factors drawn from Towards a Rigorous Definition of Information System Survivability by John C. Knight, Elisabeth A. Strunk, and Kevin J. Sullivan as a sextuple specification based on: Set of acceptable service states Set of service value factors Reachable environmental states that the system is subject to, which normally represent the challenges for the system Ordered relative service values as experienced by the user Set of valid transitions that the sys |
tem may make between all acceptable forms of service Service probabilities that define the chances that each service state satisfies the criteria of dependability CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Disruption tolerance: This could primarily arise from environmental challenges that are intrinsic to communication networks. There could be a wide variety of disruptions affecting components of the network, as in: Problems with channel connectivity Issues related to mobility Latency figures that cannot be predicted Rapidly changing environment factors Aspects of energy management in the end-user devices, which could mean issues with low energy levels Traffic tolerance: Primarily relates to dynamically injected traffic load into the system: This could be a related to unexpected but valid events like a surge of people arriving at some location due to some valid reason (arrival of a celebrity, attending a ball game, etc.) It could also be a result of attacks initiated by people or systems with malicious intent, like a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Trustworthiness. Contributes a counter set of disciplines related to aspects of the network that can be measured when it is subjected to challenges. Properties related to trustworthiness give a measure of the resilience indicator of the network, including: Dependability: A discipline that tries to quantify the extent to which a network can be relied upon to provide a service. This includes the factors of availability and reliability, which can be defined based on the following failure and repair-related measures: Mean time to failure (MTTF) is the expected value of the failure density function or a measure of how soon the next failure could occur. Mean time to repair (MTTR) is the expected value of the repair density function or a measure of how soon the system recovers from the failure. Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the sum of MTTR and MTTF, as in the time from failure to repair to the occurrence of the next failure. Availability: Defined as the probabili |
ty that a service provided by the system or network will be operational and hence can be represented as a ratio of MTTF over MTBF. Reliability: This is more related to continuity of service, whereas availability is more about a network being available to initiate a service. Reliability is defined as the probability of a system continuing to be in service over a defined time period. Maintainability: The ability of the system to undergo repairs and changes to continue to remain functional. Safety: The reliability of the system being dependable during times of crippling failures. Integrity: This is factored into dependability in terms of the system being able to maintain its state of operations and being consistent with respect to it services. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Security: This is characterized by the ability of a network or system to maintain and implement authorization and authentication policies consistently. Security is the backbone of network correctness and operation in the sense that failures in security can drastically impact other factors due to wrong access being granted to agent provocateurs and saboteurs. Factors influencing security include: Authentication under security pertains to ensuring that any user of the system is indeed the same user as being claimed. Authorization pertains to making sure the users are only able to perform or access services from the network they are authorized to do SO. Auditability pertains to ensuring that all access to the system, including success and failure, valid and invalid, authorized and unauthorized, are audited in a consistent manner and available for future review. Performability: Covers aspects of the system governing the specifications of services to be offered by the system, including the QoS aspects. Performability directly affects overall effectiveness of the network and would mostly be covered by key performance indicators, as described in Chapter 1. In addition to these factors, the complexity of the system under analysis, in terms of the la |
rge number of interconnected systems, plays a significant role too. In a system where many subcomponents interact in diverse ways, it may be found that undefined behaviors are also being manifest in the system with interactions not in accordance to any specification. Such complexity could inherently increase vulnerabilities in the system. Frameworks and Strategies for Resilience in Networks This section explains the different strategies for network resilience that have been used. We then assess the importance of some recent strategies in terms of applicability to the latest LTE networks. The Advanced Networked Systems Architecture (ANSA) project addressed aspects related to dependability in large-scale system design. Their strategy consists of eight stages: fault confinement, fault detection, fault diagnosis, reconfiguration, recovery, restart, repair, and reintegration. Performability is considered in terms of availability of acceptable levels of service. The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) has developed a multilayer framework for network survivability, including four layers: Physical layer. Relating to the infrastructure available at the physical layer, including provision for geographic redundancy System layer. With representation of nodes and links between the nodes, including the ability to do switching of links based on survivability requirements Logical layer. With provisions for support of required capacity for the network on top of the physical layer Service layer. With resources required for voice and data services and having the intelligence to do dynamic routing and an ability to reconfigure to support survivability CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION The Computer Emergency Response Team at the Carnegie Mellon University proposes a four-step strategy, including Resistance. Covering topics of traditional security and offering resistance to threats Recognition. With tools to analyze real-time attacks and manage threat responses Recovery. Including usage of redundancy concepts a |
nd planning of contingency responses Adaptation and evolution. To manage current and future threats for the network The Survivable Mobile Wireless Networking project introduced the following techniques for managing survivability, with a key focus on mobile wireless networks (Survivable Mobile Wireless Networks: Issues, Challenges, and Research Directions, by James P.G. Sterbenz and Rajesh Krishnan): Proposed use of adaptive and agile networking concepts where the link layers are aware of the environmental conditions and adapt to adjust operational parameters to enhance survivability, for example, selection of alternate frequencies based on feedback from channels. Support for routing techniques that uses geographic knowledge to enhance survival operations, such as use of alternate routing nodes when information about geographic redundancy is available. Adaptive networking could also include selective use of MAC (Medium Access Control) and network layer parameters to help adapt to varying communication layer requirements. For example, at some instant, ensuring correctness of delivery at lower performability regions may be the requirement, while in some other conditions maximizing throughput with low RTT could be the goal. Usage of satellite communication to enhance and provide connectivity in scenarios to exploit specific requirements is also part of the proposal. This includes using satellites to connect network segments that have become isolated and also exploiting specific availability and dependability windows provided by the satellite communication to be able to perform multicast operations to a large set of listener nodes for reasons of security and communication. The ResiliNets initiative argues for a strategy based on the following axioms: Faults are inevitable Understanding normal operations is necessary Expectations and preparation for adverse events and conditions is necessary Response to adverse events and conditions is necessary The resilience strategy of ResiliNets includes dual components: Defend, De |
services in the network) that are available to the system to ensure that the provided service is not impaired. It also provides further feedback to the challenge analysis on the remedy to the challenge, which is incorporated into future evolution strategies. Reactive Evolution to Sudden Changes A key aspect of network resilience is one of the axioms expressed by the ResiliNets framework: the ability to address the requirements placed on the network satisfactorily under all conditions initiated by establishing an understanding of the expectations of acceptable levels of service from the network. This should be followed by a thorough study of past challenges faced by the network in providing resilience. The outputs of such a study will illustrate the challenges and their impacts on resilience, including actions taken at those times and their impact on recovering the resilience characteristics of the network. The following quote further explains the axioms mentioned previously: We define an adverse event or ongoing condition as challenging (Section 3) the normal operation of the network. We can further classify adverse events and conditions by severity as mild, moderate, or severe, and categorise them into two types: (1) Anticipated adverse events and conditions are ones that we can predict based either on past events (such as natural disasters), and attacks (e.g. viruses, worms, DDoS) or that a reasoned threat analysis would predict might occur. (2) Unanticipated adverse events and conditions are those that we cannot predict with any specificity, but for which we can still be prepared in a general sense. For example, there will be new classes of attacks for which we should be prepared. Resilience and Survivability in Communication Networks: Strategies, Principles, and Survey of Disciplines -J.P.G. Sterbenz et al. (2010) To clarify further, this section will explain how to formulate a cogent set of steps to address those challenges that can be anticipated, their effect on the network resilience as studied and unders |
tood, and design measures that can be put in place to evolve the aspects of the network that are under stress to maintain the expected level of service. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION A Generic Template We suggest a sequence of steps to manage reactive evolution of a network. You can start by tabulating the expected levels of service, including critical attributes that could categorize the service. The KPIs of the network need to be listed, along with the service expectation to complete the understanding of requirements of network resilience. You can also mark critical KPIs among those that would necessarily need to be addressed. Next the challenges that can be imposed on the network should be tabulated, including detailed explanations about the impact on the network, by positing impacts on the KPI and the variations that could be expected. The intent of such tabulation is to gain a critical understanding of the challenge to the network and to understand the detailed impacts on the characteristics of the network as denoted by the KPIs. It is also recommended to include past challenges that have been recorded during the operations of the network under question and how the critical KPIs were impacted during these. The next step would be to link the critically impacted KPIs and make an assessment of the parts of the system that are unable to maintain the requisite functionality and thus impair the KPI as a service of the network. The critical components of the system should then be analyzed to understand how these can be reactively managed to address the challenge posed and to ensure that the key services offered by the network still manage to satisfy QoS criteria set on the operations. To complete the process, the reactive changes that are necessary are then encoded as a set of steps to be triggered manually or are recommended to be built into a set of automated processes in the network that could reactively address the challenge by managing and evolving the necessary parts of the network to satisfy the operat |
ional criteria. SON concepts (as discussed in Chapter 2) include measures that address such automatic evolution decisions. A Specific Example One of the events that tends to affect functioning of networks is the problem of "flash crowds." Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob) defines "flash mob," which is the equivalent of a flash crowd, in the physical world as follows: A flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brieftime, and then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression. Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails. In a networked world, a similar phenomenon can occur that may be related to the flash mob scenario: communication networks are overloaded due to many people physically arriving at a location as part of an unplanned event (from service provider perspective) or it may be related to conditions occurring online in other parts of interconnected networks that may be sending more traffic in a burst to the network under scrutiny, more commonly called a Slashdot effect, which Wikipedia defined as (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect): The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, occurs when a popular website links to a smaller site, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily become unavailable the name is somewhat dated as flash crowds from Slashdot were reported to be diminishing as of 2005 due to competition from similar sites. Typically, less robust sites are unable to cope with the huge increase in traffic and become unavailable-common causes are lack of sufficient data bandwidth, servers that fail to cope with the high number of requests, and traffic quotas. A flash crowd is a more generic term without using any specific name that describes a network phenomenon where a network or host suddenly receives a lot of traffic. This i |
s sometimes due to the appearance of a web site on a blog or news column. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION The first response in such a scenario would be to determine the impacts on the network's KPI due to such a flash crowd event, which could possibly include the following for an LTE network: Availability impact. New subscribers may not be able to latch on to the network in the area covered by cells subject to the flash crowd. Dependability impact. Existing subscribers may face diminished or unreliable service in terms of download or other operations on ongoing requests. Performability impact. Existing subscribers may face a huge drop in performance in terms of ensured speeds in the network during the event. Some of the conditions for handling of such situations in a related domain of video service is covered by Wenan Zhou et al. Remedial actions to this in our scenario could involve the following: Detection that a flash crowd event has occurred in real time Distribution of incoming requests to other parts of the network (neighboring cells) or to interrelated systems like 2G or 3G as a fixed rule until the flash event has passed Reducing QoS in a planned manner across all ongoing services in the network region under the impact Continually measuring system performance and taking additional measures like engaging alternate service providers to share some requests based on existing sharing arrangements kept in place for such exigencies Selection of suitable steps to be taken would depend on and be determined by the resilience management function discussed earlier, which would control the actions and help the system handle the challenge. Anticipation of Changes in Industry This section provides a walkthrough of what could be a dream scenario for a company with a very successful product in the industry. You have a great product running successfully in the industry. Customers throng to your product and services in huge hoards. Cash registers are ringing metaphorically all the time and the company's future seems to |
be limitless, filled to the horizon with nary a sunset that can be envisioned and everyone in the company is living happily ever after. If this sounds too good to be true, it may well be. Numerous companies with the sun-never-sets attitude have had their visions broken and brought rapidly down to the reality of declining profits or even bankruptcy by changes happening in the industry. The focus of our efforts here is on those situations where the changes happening in the industry have caught the company or product napping. We focus here on an example of one such drastic change as was seen in recent history within the communications industry. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION The Decline of BlackBerry Note The information in this section relates to recent events in the decline in BlackBerry's position in the U.S. smartphone market and reasons that could be attributed for the same. It is not indicative of a position on BlackBerry's future as a company or of performance of BlackBerry in other markets. In September 2013, the company BlackBerry made announcements to the following effects when declaring its Preliminary Second Quarter Fiscal 2014 Results http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/blackberry- announces-preliminary-second-quarter-fiscal-2014-results-provides-business-nasdaq-bbry-1833209.htm): Expecting a GAAP net operating loss of approximately $950 million to $995 million Resulting from the increasingly competitive business environment impacting BlackBerry smartphone volumes, and a pretax restructuring charge of $72 million Announcing restructuring plans including: Reduction of approximately 4,500 employees Targeted reduction of operating expenditures by approximately 50% by end of Q1 Fiscal 2015 Further roadmap updates included the following: To refocus on enterprise and prosumer market Offering end-to-end solutions, including hardware, software, and services Reduce smartphone portfolio from six devices to four With two phones targeting high-end prosumer and two entry-level devices Further forward-look |
ing statements include: Increasing penetration in BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES 10) with nearly 31% increase in servers installation from July 2013 Board continues to look at strategic alternative (Note: more on this later in this section) Although BlackBerry may still be able to make a turnaround and reinvent itself, the decline in the company's performance is very evident. Also, some additional information on where BlackBerry was a few years earlier (year 2011) may yield further pointers as to the direction the company's results have been leading it ness.time.com/2013/09/20/blackberry-to-layoff-4500-amid-massive-losses/) BlackBerry was employing 17,000 people around 2011 It was the proud owner of a 14% share in the U.S. smartphone market in 2011 Compare that to the following figures: BlackBerry had less than a 3% share of the smartphones in U.S. market in 2013 Its total employee strength in March 2013 was 12,700, which would undergo a reduction by nearly 35%, as mentioned above CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION As a result of the strategic alternatives assessment mentioned in their 2014 results, BlackBerry announced a LoI (Letter of Intent) with a consortium led by Fairfax to sell and transfer ownership (http://press.blackberry.com/ financial/2013/blackberry-enters-into-letter-of-intent-with-consortium-led-by-f.htm It is obvious to ask the question, Where did BlackBerry seemingly go wrong? It was very much a company in good health and named by Fortune magazine in 2009 to be the fastest growing company in the world, attested to by earnings growing by an astounding 84% per year (http://business. com/2013/09/24/the-fatal-mistake- that-doomed-blackberry/). Exploring its situation would seem to indicate some chief reasons for its demise. BlackBerry had ridden the wave, making phones that were tuned to serve business users with its own very unique features of push e-mail, which allowed users to receive their company e-mails automatically. Also, the usage of a qwerty keyboard enabled fully functional and eas |
ier typing. What BlackBerry did not do well was anticipate the changes that were occurring in the market. Consumers (i.e., end users) were becoming the new drivers for smartphone sales. Applications were driving mobile content, and usage and lack of applications meant lack of usability and a disadvantage in comparison to other smartphones. Mobile phones were becoming full-fledged entertainment stations, with larger screens, touchscreen displays, and additional processing and performance requirements. Apple and Google were driving the innovations through iPhone and Android mobiles and leaving the competition behind, but they were also helped by other trends. The proprietary security feature offered by BlackBerry became its Achilles' heel for regulators who wanted to monitor communication. Faster network speeds offered by 3G and 4G networks made a big pipeline available for end users to access from their phones. Push messaging was no longer a differentiator, as the new smartphones were offering the same by default. BlackBerry has seemingly now taken steps to adapt its roadmap and is seeking to reinvent itself in the new order of things. It is ironic though that changes that need to be made in anticipation of industry trends (trend of touchscreen-based smartphones) are often delayed by such companies until the time when they see declining results. As we will explain in the next section, failure to anticipate and adapt to the marketplace changes are primary reasons why businesses start to decline. Learning this may not be so easy though, as even cultural aspects of the organization need to be evolved to get into an adaptive mindset. Future Goals and Services from a Business or Organization Perspective What would be the best way to accomplish planned evolution for a company? If you discount innovative streaks that could help create industry-defining, path-breaking innovations, the most common tool available to an organization would prove to be goals and services that an organization wants to provide and target. This w |
ould help the organization in the following ways: Establish a process by which all key stakeholders can be involved to get a shared vision of the organization's future Enable envisioning such a future to be implemented using specific goals and services Incorporate inputs related to the latest trends as seen in the industry or domain Make meaningful actions to be taken to be able to change as needed CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Much of this has been discussed in Chapter 4. Here we will discuss the aspect of requirements from a organizational perspective in more detail, and in the process, we will define the roadmap evolution that will be discussed in Chapter 6. Yet, for an organization to be able to implement the evolution process, there needs to be much thought given to certain organizational factors, including: What the maturity level of the organization is How contingency plans are put in place How the company plans to manage its service and business continuity requirements How open the organization is to new thoughts and nurturing an ability or culture to think openly about adapting to and embracing change The next section will discuss these areas in more depth. Organizational Factors So hopefully you now understand the process of planned evolution, including the models used to assess the resilience of the network, the frameworks available for evaluation, and how organizations can plan to put these processes in action to provide reactive evolution to sudden changes. You also should now know how important it is for organizations to learn to anticipate changes that come in the industry so new directions and goals can be set to help guide the organization to evolve in a planned manner and to provide a future that still holds relevance to the network, the product, and the company as a whole, which could help sustain success and ensure profitability and increase the chances for continued growth. As discussed previously, much of planned evolution starts with defining the acceptable levels of service and putti |
ng in place a planned process for handling challenging situations where the level of service can be disrupted. The response team plays an integral part in this process. Response Team in Place One of the critical aspects of deployment of any network or service involves the ability to visualize how the product will work after deployment. This will involve understanding the process by which customers will deploy the product, including any qualification cycles and what is expected from the organization during these times. What levels of service are expected and provided will also depend on the type of contract executed between the entities and the service-level agreements (SLA) that are put in place. Let's look at it from the other side. If you are an operator, what should you be looking at before deploying a network? What are the critical questions you need to ask of an organization to make sure all the pieces are in place to help make a successful rollout of the product? You could start with the following: What are the capabilities of operations and monitoring that are provided by the network? What levels of service are ensured by the network? Are there dedicated network monitoring centers available? Are there ways to do live monitoring of the performance of the networks? Is there a process in place to ensure that a solution is found as quickly as possible without violating any SLAs agreed upon? What processes are in place to ensure that issues do not occur again? Is there a process in place to proactively discuss the health of the network and steps that can be taken to ensure continued acceptable performance in the face of changing requirements? CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Note Aspects of network operations in regard to product features are discussed in Chapter 4. Assuming the product features are taken care of in terms of setting up appropriate operations and management capabilities, let's look at the aspects of a response team that will help the organization responsible for network operations run a succe |
ssful deployment in line with customer expectations. In organizations where a network service team exists, they have the following responsibilities: Interacting with the network design team, or the team that would have engineered the network (in accordance with principles laid out in Chapter 1), to ensure they understand the network Setting up and run the network monitoring centers on a service basis Performing first-level analysis on any outage reported by the customer on the network Analyzing and assessing the root cause and taking the necessary actions to ensure services offered by the network are not diminished Escalating to a customer support team for issues they are not able to handle by raising an incidence report and collecting enough information and adding their own analysis to the customer incidence ticket There should be a customer support team of experts who are the first response team to manage issues reported by customer. Their responsibilities would include: Being trained experts in the product and the domain Understanding first-level issues and what is going wrong at the customer set up Collecting enough information about the issue and being able to ask further questions to understand what is happening with the network Solving the issue for the customer or propose a workaround within approved SLA Escalating the incident to product engineering to be able to get a solution if they are unable to find one There should be a critical response team to handle scenarios in which certain unplanned events may have occurred that have put performance of the network under critically unacceptable levels. These situations include, but are not restricted to: A natural disaster or a manmade event (war scenarios) that may have materialized to severely impact operability of the network Attacks on security of the network that may have created critical vulnerabilities to compromise security of the network Such situations require deployment of a critical response team, which would be tuned to handle the situation in the |
following ways: Be authorized to take actions to help deescalate the situation Have enough preapprovals to help procure necessary resources and support Travel to the customer's location if needed to resolve the issues on an urgent basis Find ways to give critical responses in very short time spans Help reduce the criticality of the situation to an extent that normal operations, even at an impaired level, can be resumed so the case can be handed over to the regular support team CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Although having response teams in place for different levels of support to the customer is a good practice, it must be made clear to personnel in such teams how these teams are supposed to interact with one another and define the SLAs governing those interactions. This would help ensure that the teams know the roles they play and are focused on providing the best possible responses to the customer and help the network achieve is best performance. Having a document detailing the process of such engagement with the customer and within the teams is a good step toward achieving such goals. Business Continuity Planning Previously in this chapter, we discussed the concepts of network resilience, how it is defined, measured, about the disciplines contributing to it, and the processes and strategies for managing it. As an extension of that discussion, business continuity can be defined as the ability of the business to be resilient during challenges (including natural calamities and other manmade disasters) and to continue to operate and execute normal business functions. With that introduction, let's get some definitions out of the way. Business Continuity (BC) is defined as the capability of the organization to continue delivery of products or services at acceptable predefined levels following a disruptive incident. ISO 22300:2012(en) Societal security-Terminology Business Continuity Management (BCM) is defined as holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organization and the impacts |
to business operations those threats, ifrealized, might cause, and which provides a framework for building organizational resilience with the capability of an effective response that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities. ISO 22301:2012(en) Societal security-Business continuity management systems-Requirements [5] The Business Continuity Institute defines a BCM lifecycle as one that improves the overall resilience of the organization using the following good practices: A culture of embedding business continuity should be at the core of the practice A cycle of analysis, design, and implementation should form a continuous loop around business continuity An outer cycle of policy and program management should be used to control and determine the overall BCM lifecycle The British Standards Institution defines its business continuity management code of practice (BS 25999-1:2006) to cover the following aspects of business continuity: Scope Policy Identifying critical business functions Developing and managing a business specific continuity plan Monitoring and maintaining performance Embedding a culture of business continuity awareness in your organization. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION A business continuity management system (BCMS), a system for managing business continuity, would thus ensure that business continuity is defined and managed effectively in accordance with the context and needs of the organization. Let's investigate the requirements for implementing such a system. Requirements for Business Continuity Management System The ISO 22301 standards define the BCMS framework in conjunction with the well-known quality control loop of the PDCA cycle (also known as Deming cycle), which comprises the following four phases applied continuously: Plan. Where one establishes the objectives and processes necessary for achieving the goals, and hence formulates a plan. Do. Where the steps in accordance to the plan are executed. Check. Where the results are actu |
ally checked and measured to help understand the deviations against specified results. This phase was also later changed to Study to help understand that the phase is not just about measuring, but more about understanding the results. Act: Where corrective actions are taken to help act on the significant differences between expected and actual results. This should encompass an understanding of the root causes for the deviations so the corrective actions are both remedial and preventive in nature. The guidelines necessary to determine the framework for requirements for a BCMS are: Understanding the organization's needs and the necessity for establishing business continuity management policy and objectives Implementing and operating controls and measures for managing an organization's overall capability to manage disruptive incidents Monitoring and reviewing the performance and effectiveness of the BCMS Continual improvement based on objective measurement Having introduced components of the BCMS, let's look at the actual requirements of the BCMS as defined by the ISO standard(http://pecb.org/iso22301/iso22301_whitepaper.pdf).1 The context of the organization should include: A thorough understanding of the products, services, partners, channels, and relationships to understand the impact of an event that could challenge business continuity. The corporate policy of the organization determines the values chosen by the organization to help drive its goals and objectives. The business continuity policy (BCP) determines the necessary requirements for business continuity that are acceptable to the organization. A strategic alignment between the corporate policy and the BCP is vital for the success of the BCMS. A risk assessment gives information about the risk appetite of the organization, as to what levels of risk it is comfortable with. Identify the relevant stakeholders and their needs and expectations from the BCMS to complete the understanding of the context. Impacts or constraints imposed by any regulatory bodies fo |
r operation. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Leadership is entrusted with the ownership for the success of the BCMS and also the role of sponsor for the convey the necessary importance of the BCMS to the teams. Hence, leadership will need to ensure: Necessary resources are available for the BCMS. The importance of BCMS is understood by the teams. Continual support is provided to help implement, execute, monitor, and improve the BCMS. The right people are assigned clearly communicated roles and responsibilities for the BCMS. Planning is the most critical part of the BCMS, and it should ensure the following: The plan is clear and takes into account maps to the acceptable levels of service expected from the network and product. The plan should provide for measurability of the functioning of the BCMS. The plan should ensure that there are opportunities provided to review and update it as needed. Support includes the necessary parts needed to complete the planning in terms of: Synchronizing the plan with all relevant stakeholders, internal and external Documenting the plan correctly and making proper communication regarding the plan at correct points of time Provision and enablement of required resources to implement the plan Operation is the phase when the plan is put into action after considering the following inputs: Business impact analysis when critical processes and services and their interdependencies are identified to support appropriate levels of service. Risk assessment of the various events and their impacts on business should be assessed and the risks ranked to ensure systematic processing of risks. Only those risks with enough disruptive potential as determined by the policy should be handled as part of the plan. The actual strategy that will be used to handle business continuity challenges should be established. Procedures that need to be followed as part of implementation of the BCMS should be documented, including exact conditions of the disruptive event being handled, the communication protocol th |
at should be followed to indicate the plan is being executed, the roles and responsibilities of different people involved, and awareness of factors that could impact the effectiveness of actions. Exercising and testing the procedures to confirm that the procedures work as expected. It also helps if the organization can assess that BCMS work in alignment with other goals of the organization. Performance evaluation should include: Permanent systems to monitor performance of the BCMS Formal audits conducted on a regular basis to monitor and assess the performance and collect inputs for improvement CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Improvement to the BCMS should include continuous processes that are set in place to keep checking the performance of BCMS against requirements. There should be a means to control and improve the procedures and guidelines to ensure performance is maintained or improved on an ongoing basis. All of these requirements should be implemented as part of BCMS to have a system that will enable, monitor, track, and maintain business continuity at all times, especially in times of strife and disaster. Let's look at some more specific inputs related to service continuity planning, which in many ways is a subset of BCP. Service Continuity Planning Service continuity planning is widely seen as a subset of business continuity planning. There is a reason for this. Most organizations look at service continuity as denoting IT service continuity. This is both a necessary and important view as IT services provide the backbone for operations of most businesses around the world. BCP cannot exist without IT service continuity planning in place. The European Network and Information Security Agency has the following to say on the topic: IT service continuity addresses the IT aspect of business continuity. In today's economy, business processes increasingly rely on information and communication technology (ICT) and electronic data (e-data). ICT systems and e-data are, therefore, crucial components of the process |
es and their safe and timely restoration is of paramount importance. If such systems are disrupted, an organization's operations can grind to a halt. If the interruption is serious enough, and no risk management planning has occurred, a firm may even go out of business. So how do we go about preparing for service continuity planning? What are the steps involved in this? Will the framework for BCP also work here? These are some of the questions that need answering. In most cases, we could very well apply the principles used for developing BCP and BCMS to requirements for IT services as well. We should start by defining the key stakeholders involved in the IT service continuity planning. Although this would definitely include key people from the IT team, it would also include key stakeholders from other business units who are dependent on the IT services for their valuable input toward defining the critical IT services that need to be assessed for continuity purposes. This should be followed by an enumeration of key IT services and the importance placed by business on continued functioning of these services during critical periods. Comprehensive risk assessment about threats to these services should be completed and the risks and the strategies to mitigate these should be documented. Contingency plans in case of failure of mitigation should also be assessed, and alternate strategies should be put in place to handle them. One such valuable contingency planning involves setting up multiple redundant sites to take over IT and business service processing in the event of a primary site going out of service. Provisioning of Alternate Facilities In the event that an organization's main facility or IT assets, networks, and applications are lost, an alternate and redundant facility should be made available to help continue provisioning of services and processing of information. The Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness of the Government of Canada refers to the following types of alternate f |
acilities that can be provisioned: Cold site: This form of facility is the least costly method of maintaining an alternate site. The reference to coldness is in a way related to the time taken to get the site up and running from its cold or inert state. Cold sites take a maximum time to become fully operational. In terms of IT infrastructure, the site could take time to build up services to the level that the functioning site was providing before it can handle the services by itself. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Warm site: A warm site could be partially equipped with required service and facilities SO that it can take over the responsibilities of an active site in a short span of time, which may be a matter of a few hours. Warm sites are more costly to maintain compared to cold sites. Hot site: A hot site is the most resilient way of maintaining an alternate site. A hot site is normally completely in synch with the primary site and can take over responsibilities very much in real time. A hot site is very costly to maintain as services and infrastructure need to be brought up and maintained to be a complete and online backup for the primary site. The site that is selected as the primary alternate should be decided based on the criticality of the services and the cost of not providing service. This could help in assessing the tradeoff between the costs incurred by a lack of continuity VS. the cost of setting up an appropriate alternate site. Cultural Encouragement to Embrace Futuristic and Even Fantastic Scenarios You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink English proverb The processes described in this chapter are aimed primarily at helping an organization improve its ability to handle challenging situations. Processes are a way to achieve a shared goal: a common language to help different people understand the issues involved in a joint venture and a common path to achieve collective results. But processes alone do not guarantee anything. Processes are only as effective as the efforts of th |
e people who are applying them. A change in processes needs to be preceded by a change in thinking in the people involved in the organization to understand the context of the change and to appreciate the reasons for implementing the change. In the event that new processes are implemented without the mindset being changed, it may pretty well end up like the proverbial horse that is brought to the water. It may snort, it may nibble, and it may stomp nervously around, but it most definitely would not drink the water unless it has a mind to do SO. The Jisc infoNet infokit on Change Management (http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management/ notes the following aspects are involved in any change: "Change usually involves three aspects: people, processes, and culture." It is not enough to get only the processes right. To properly manage the change, it is as important to understand people involved and the culture prevalent among them. Every change that is brought about inherently faces resistance toward adoption of the change. Once this resistance is overcome, it becomes easier to make the transition and implement the change. Also, in some cases, it could make it easier to understand which aspects of the culture itself need to be changed for the betterment of the organization. The onus for cultivating the necessary culture needed to inspire and evolve an organization is largely place on leadership of the organization. Coming back to the topic of resilience and continuity of services, it should be apparent that people and personnel involved should be encouraged to cultivate an attitude for thinking about possibilities. These possibilities could be about both good and bad events that could happen and have an impact on the business and the organization. Better anticipation in problem-oriented thinking could lead to better preparedness for such situations in that all aspects of planning-impact analysis, preparation of mitigation plans, and putting such plans into action-can help the evolution of the roadmap to embr |
ace the change. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Roadmap Mutability mu-ta-ble Capable of change or of being changed in form, quality, or nature Merriam-Webster's Dictionary Mutability, in the context of roadmaps, is important in that it provides a way to assess whether the roadmaps are capable of changing over time. It also provides a way to check the effectiveness of the processes set in place for evolution of roadmaps under various conditions. Having introduced a reasonably acceptable definition for roadmap mutability, we propose the following as one of the ways to measure this. It is important to understand that while the concept of defining and measuring mutability of roadmaps seems important enough to us, we were unable to find specific references to this in our searches in standard publications. How can a change be defined as completed? One way is to define conditions of acceptance to confirm that the change is definitely in place in an entity where it is being changed. It follows that implementation of the change should be verifiable by inspection of the entity and also by observations associated with the behavior of the entity in cases where the change impacts some visible behavior of that change. If we were to define the conditions for successful change to a roadmap, they could include: All aspects of the roadmap are updated Viable plans for implementation of updated roadmap are available All stakeholders involved in roadmap communication have been updated about the changes All documentation related to the change is completed and available The resources necessary for achieving the changed roadmap are in place or arranged Based on such an acceptance of a change to a roadmap, mutability could be defined as a function of the number of valid changes initiated VS. the number of changes accepted successfully by the roadmap. A lower factor of accepted changes could imply that the organization still has a ways to go to achieve better roadmap mutability in order to evolve the network and the product at a rate |
at which meaningful evolution could be possible. Roadmap Agility a.gil.i.ty The state or quality of being agile; nimbleness. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Although the concept of mutability focuses more on the ability to change, agility is concerned more with the rate which such a change is possible. An entity that is receptive to change, yet not agile enough, may struggle to survive through conditions that demand better agility. In the context of roadmaps, we could define agility as a measure of the rate at which changes are accepted and implemented as part of the roadmap. We define this measure to start at the arrival of a valid request for a change in roadmap and measure the time taken for the change to be reviewed, evaluated, and incorporated as part of the roadmap. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION At periods that are deemed to be critical to the network or product, it may be a valid expectation for an organization to be able to respond very quickly to change requests. Agility at such times may be the x-factor that helps a good product that is slow to respond to changes become something close to a market leader. Such agility needs a culture of understanding between the stakeholders of the product: a shared vision and singleness of purpose to make changes happen in the product and overcome their personal differences to achieve a greater goal-that of product betterment. Summary This chapter began by looking at planned evolution to the networks roadmap. We defined the concept of network resilience and looked at different models this. We also walked through a strategy of reactive evolution for sudden changes, illustrated with a specific example for using a suggested template. We then suggested ways in which industry changes could be anticipated. We also looked at ways in which future goals for business and services could be used as a tool to help manage evolution of the roadmap. We then went through organizational factors that could help in roadmap evolution-that of d |
esigning and having a response team in place, on planning business continuity and service continuity aspects, and the importance of developing a culture to embracing change in the organization. We also briefly discussed proposed measures of roadmap mutability and roadmap agility to help assess and evaluate aspects of roadmap management for the organization, which could help answer questions about the flexibility of the roadmap and the speed with which the organization evolves. This chapter emphasized that managing evolving LTE networks is also about paying attention to aspects of network resilience, business and service continuity planning, and being responsive to changes as needed in the industry. CHAPTER 6 A Process for Network Roadmap Evolution Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States Driving is not about getting the car going in the right direction. Driving is about constantly paying attention, making a little correction this way, a little correction that way. -Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained Product development is tough, but getting customers to pay for what they want and keeping them happy is tougher. Remaining competitive while developing the product to suit the customers' needs and running a profitable business are even tougher. A great product remains successful over the years, has good customer backing and satisfaction, and enables the company to remain profitable enough to make even better products. This requires many people (business development, systems engineering, product development, product support, management, sponsors, customers) to work well together. And yet, their efforts may not bear much fruit if other things not under its control conspire against a company's efforts. Critical and central to all of this is the ability of the organization to develop a culture of roadmap awareness. By this we mean not just an ability to make a great roadmap, but also cultivating a sense of caring for this, to keep th |
e roadmap alive and active, to be aware of changes that are needed, and to be agile enough to handle the changes in a systematic way, hence, keeping the product competitive and evolving. Putting a system in place would be a great way to begin developing a culture that embraces roadmap evolution. Most companies make more reactive changes to a roadmap than proactive, and changing the attitude of people involved is just as important, if not more, than establishing a process for the same. This chapter presents a process framework to address network roadmap evolution. We have been discussing different aspects of this in the previous chapters, but in this chapter we propose processes with necessary responsibilities to handle different aspects of network evolution. Some inevitable caveats need to be noted here. We do note that organizations may have well-established processes to handle the various aspects of roadmap evolution. Our aim is definitely not to preempt such processes in favor of the one we describe or to recommend ours over the established and successful processes that may be in practice. However, we do believe elements of the process framework described in this chapter could help stimulate you to think about your current processes and determine if any could be improved to address some aspects highlighted in this chapter. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION We begin by discussing frameworks and contexts under which roadmap development could be happening. We explore in more detail the process notation that would be followed for roadmap evolution, and then present a high-level summary of this. We also detail each of the subprocesses, focusing on the what rather than the how. Some of the processes could be optional, but it is our firm belief that in considering these processes, you could make more educated decisions on how they could be used to evolve your network roadmap. Aspects of Network Roadmap Management This first part of the discussion presents an overall cycle for roadmap management. We fo |
llow this by discussing how roadmaps are implemented in most products. We conclude the setup with an understanding of the stakeholders involved in the road mapping process so that we can dig deeper into the framework later in the chapter. Roadmap Development Cycle We propose that at the highest level, a roadmap development can be modeled through the following four phases: Planning phase. Every cycle of the road mapping process starts with the planning phase, even if this is the first time the roadmap is being made. Execution phase. Once a roadmap has been planned, it needs to be executed as per the organization's execution models through programs and projects. Review phase. The roadmap under execution needs to be reviewed on a periodic basis and findings concluded. Update phase. Every roadmap review results in some updates to the roadmap, which may need to go through the planning cycle once again. Figure 6-1 illustrates the roadmap development cycle. Update Roadmap Execute Review Figure 6-1. Roadmap development cycle CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Also, throughout the roadmap development cycle, the roadmap and the changes to it should be communicated to all stakeholders, internal and external, as per the agreed-to communication guidelines set up for this. This is critical to the success of the roadmap in the following ways: It helps share a common vision across all stakeholders. It enables roadmap changes to get reviewed and gaps (if any) identified. It helps establish buy-in for the roadmap from the stakeholders. It enables stakeholders to understand and help improve the road mapping process where needed. Roadmap Execution: Programs, Projects, and Portfolios Ideally, all of the plans of an organization to be accomplished over a timeframe make up its portfolio. This portfolio may include development in many products in parallel. For each of these products, the organization needs to define what it wants to get developed as part of its roadmap. Each of the roadmaps may then get executed through o |
ne or more programs. Each program may need multiple projects to be executed in parallel or in sequence to complete its objective. Figure 6-2 diagrams the path of roadmap execution. Roadmap execution Program Project 1 Project 2 Figure 6-2. Roadmap execution through programs and projects Roadmap planning must involve sound project management practices as followed in the organization by keeping the following in mind: Everyone should be in agreement and alignment about the roadmap execution in the near future. Resources and approvals must be in place for planned roadmap execution. Project planning should include balance for the project constraints of scope, quality, and schedule. Programs and projects through which a roadmap is executed must be monitored consistently with sound project management practices to be able to analyze the impacts on the roadmap. Note We strongly recommend following project management practices as described by the Project Management Institute in the Project Management Body of Knowledge for project execution (www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and Standards. aspx). CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Factors Affecting Roadmap Development As discussed in Chapter 5, there are several factors that affect how the roadmap gets developed. Figure 6-3 illustrates these factors. The roadmap should contain baselines as to how these aspects are addressed, and these factors also need to be continually monitored for successful roadmap development and evolution. Business continuity Operability Functionality Roadmap Proactive Resilience evolution Figure 6-3. Factors that affect roadmap development Project Management Processes One of the assumptions that can be make in proposing a framework of processes for roadmap evolution is that the organization is already following a standard set of processes to manage its projects. We baseline our framework on the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) framework of processes promulgated by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Hence, we assume that the proce |
sses listed in in the PMBOK framework are already part of the project management practices followed by any organization working toward roadmap evolution. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION A Framework of Processes for Roadmap Evolution In proposing our processes, we are very much in alignment with the process management framework as defined by the PMI with its Project Management Body of Knowledge. This section provides an overview of the process framework that we propose for roadmap management and evolution. Table 6-1 lists the processes and the areas they affect. Table 6-1. Processes for the Areas Involved in Roadmap Evolution Knowledge Area Planning Execution Review Roadmap Change Processes Processes Processes Processes Integration Develop roadmap Execute roadmap Perform roadmap Perform roadmap management management plan review change control Define roadmap Resilience Plan resilience Perform network management management resilience review Define service levels Perform challenge KPI impact analysis Define resilience strategy Operability Plan operability management management Develop Roadmap Management Plan In our framework, the roadmap management plan is the central plan that holds all the information needed to define, execute, and manage roadmap evolution as per the needs of an organization. Figure 6-4 illustrated this process. Input Tools and Techniques Roadmap charter Output Stakeholders Roadmap management plan development Roadmap Enterprise/domain workshops management plan factors Expert judgment Other subsidiary Organization input plans Figure 6-4. Roadmap development plan CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Develop Roadmap Management Plan: Input Roadmap Charter Under a roadmap charter or an equivalent document, we expect the following input to be made available: Clear vision of the product or network that is to be developed with critical features and targets Initial input and guidance regarding key aspects of scope, cost, timelines, and other approvals for roadmap development A |
ny proposals or studies done on the product roadmap Critical information regarding the domain or market Critical input with regard to chief competitors for the product and their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats analysis Input regarding key customers and their expectations Input regarding sponsors for the project and management expectations Stakeholder Management Plan Input about specific stakeholders and their communication requirements is needed as a basis for a roadmap management plan. Decisions need to be made about specific communication requirements from a roadmap management perspective, and these may need to override or augment the stakeholder management plan. For example, you may decide to limit roadmap communication to happen at fixed timelines in the year, while project communication may happen more regularly. Enterprise or Domain Factors Under enterprise or domain factors, you could consider: Standard input related to roadmaps as followed in the industry Competitor product roadmap input, if any Standards that could apply to the domain with respect to the roadmap under development Organization Input Under organizational input, you could consider: Processes and templates followed in the organization that could govern roadmap development Any specific organization level standards that could be constraining or applying to the roadmap, such as Capability Maturity Model Integration compliance Any other input from the organization's project management office Input and information from other past or current projects and their roadmaps CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Develop Roadmap Management Plan: Tools and Techniques You may find some tools and techniques are more commonly used than others. We will explain these in detail here and then only reference them in later sections when the same technique is used in other processes. Roadmap Development Workshops Roadmap development is a very important activity not just to decide upon the roadmap, but also to serve as a good team-buildi |
ng activity. We expect the following participants to be part of these roadmap development workshops: representatives from critical stakeholder groups for the product, including project sponsor, senior management, product development team, product support team, systems engineering, product validation/testing team, quality assurance team, and subject matter experts. Workshops should focus on getting consistent and valid input about how the product roadmap will be defined, documented, communicated, managed, executed, reviewed, and updated. Expert Judgment Although a workshop is a good way to collect input and brainstorm issues and solutions, the final decisions on the roadmap plan should be determined by expert judgment, as executed by business development personnel and approved by senior management team. Develop Roadmap Management Plan: Output The roadmap management plan could be a high-level document listing guidelines and referencing other plans for operations, or it could be a detailed document giving exact procedures and fine points related to how roadmaps will be developed and managed. The following critical items should be part of every roadmap management plan: Decisions about how the roadmap will be documented, including the following template elements: Description of product or domain Standards of compliance, if any, for the roadmap Format of the roadmap, as in: Textual representation Block diagrams Timeline charts VS. feature Multiple levels of roadmap information Configuration management of the roadmap, such as how it will be versioned and where it will be stored Caveats, if any, about features listed in the roadmap and what level of confidence can be associated with them CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Guidelines about roadmap communication to stakeholders and critically to customers with information about: When communication will be made Who is responsible for the communication What information will be communicated How will customer feedback be collected Guidelines about how the roadma |
p updates will be handled: Periodic updates: What will be the frequency of the periodic roadmap update What input will be needed to prepare for the update What process will be followed to execute the update Reactive updates: On what conditions will a roadmap review be done What input will be needed for the review What process will be followed to make the review and update Guidelines about roadmap change board (RCB): Who will constitute the RCB What criteria will be followed to accept a change to the roadmap What are the inputs and assessments that will be needed to perform a review When and how will the RCB convene and deal with the change requests Data that should be collected and measured during roadmap evolution, including: Data about number of times a roadmap update was requested How soon the updates were dealt with Roadmap execution progress Recording values of roadmap agility and mutability to rate to the roadmap evolution process Information and guidelines about roadmap subsidiary plans (optional): Operability baseline Resilience baseline Business continuity plan Service continuity plan Reactive changes plan CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Define Roadmap The define roadmap process is the main process that develops the network roadmap. The output from this process is the actual roadmap that will be executed through different projects and programs to achieve the organization's objective. Figure 6-5 illustrates this process. Input Roadmap charter Roadmap management plan Tools and Techniques Roadmap feature inputs Workshops Output Applicable standards Expert judgment Resilience management plan Release management techniques Network roadmap Resilience strategy Prioritization techniques High-level estimates (partial) Business continuity plan input Project management plans Operability management plan Roadmap communication material Approved roadmap update requests Resource calendars Organization input Figure 6-5. Defining the roadmap Define Roadmap: Input The roadmap charter and roadmap management |
plan are critical inputs for the define roadmap process. Roadmap Feature Input Features to be developed as part of the roadmap should be made available by the PLM or marketing function with the following information: Customer visible impact of the feature Motivation for the feature (needed by a certain customer, needed for standard compliance, etc.) Importance of the feature in terms of revenue generation capability Feature complexity in development and testing Dependency on other features Applicable Standards Standards that impact the features under development need to be known and understood to accurately define the roadmap. Also, roadmaps need to define the standard baseline to which they adhere, and customers use this information to understand the feature functionality, which can differ from release to release. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Resilience Management Plan The resilience management plan should give the following input to the roadmap: Which resilience measures need to be developed as part of the roadmap Prioritized input regarding service level definitions Prioritized list challenges that need to be handled with information about past system behavior under challenges Cost or impact due to degradation of KPIs or lack of resilience handling Resilience input defined in terms of system aspects that could be estimated and developed as part of the roadmap Operability Management Plan Operability aspects of the network need to be derived from the operability management plan, including input about: Support provided for management of fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security (ITU-T M.3400 standard) as per industry and organization standards Specific operability aspects that need to be taken care of for deployment and monitoring aspects of the network Business Continuity Plan Input Aspects of business continuity planning definitely impact a roadmap that is under development. Requirements for this have to be part of the defining roadmap process. However, some observations |
can be made here: In general, we consider the organization that is developing software and hardware components for the network to be the development organization. As for any organization that is operating on network development, there may be specific requirements for business continuity to be maintained. The network roadmap that is being developed may be constrained by such requirements as: Developing geographic redundancy among development teams Operating multiple teams to handle customer issues to satisfy service requirements Also, the organization that is buying the network for deployment, which would normally be a service provider, could also have specific business continuity plans under operation. These could determine the efficacy with which it can deploy, manage, and operate the network and the businesses that could run on it. These requirements should also be communicated to the PLM team responsible for customer interactions and should be included in the roadmap definition process as input. Approved Roadmap Update Requests Roadmap update requests that have been reviewed and approved by the roadmap change control process are input in the define roadmap process. These requests start a fresh cycle of roadmap planning for updating the roadmap that will have to be run through the roadmap development cycle. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Resource Calendars Resource calendars provide critical input about the availability of existing resources and their competencies. It should also be clear from the resource calendars when certain resources and teams complete current engagements for ongoing projects and programs so the input is added to the roadmap under development. Define Roadmap: Tools and Techniques Workshops Facilitated and focused workshops are one of the best tools to define and arrive at the roadmap. Workshops can facilitate group decision making and also help in getting buy-in from necessary stakeholders for the roadmap. The following could be implemented in workshops to help arrive at |
the roadmap: Group estimation techniques like wideband delphi could be used Perspectives from different groups could be shared about the importance of features and ensuing discussions could also help bring out important open issues to be noted for follow up Management approval and stakeholder positions can be obtained for the roadmap Release Management Techniques Release management techniques include making preliminary estimates for the features with impact analysis and development efforts and then slotting them into releases to understand how the features could be developed given the cost, schedule, and resource constraints. There could be company- or product-level complexities associated with the process of making a release, information that could be helpful to make a working roadmap with meaningful feature groups and priorities. Prioritization Techniques Prioritization techniques are helpful in ordering the features that are input to the roadmap. Different aspects could be estimated using measures like function points, story points, and so forth, and these could be used to prioritize the features for the roadmap. Dependency and interdependency between features would also need to be considered when prioritizing features. Prioritization should also take into account the value for the feature from both the business and the customer perspectives. Define Roadmap: Output Network Roadmap The actual network roadmap consists of the output of the process, and depending on the organization, it could contain the following: A prioritized ordered feature list with links to further details about the high-level description of each feature with critical impact to the customer or product Input regarding release milestones, contents of the release, and the timeline for when the release is planned A list of which parts of the roadmap are final and which parts are tentative and could be changed CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION It should be a cumulative list in the sense that it should show the features and releas |
es made in the past SO the reader can completely understand and make sense of the current and future items projected in the roadmap. It should also include a list of the confidentiality clauses embedded to indicate parts that could be shared with external stakeholders and parts that should not be visible outside the developing organization (e.g., some roadmaps could make high-level estimates not visible to end customers) The roadmap could also be under configuration control, and hence, could be named and numbered following organization policies. The roadmap could optionally include high-level estimates, areas of impact, and resource requirements for a subset of features that are of high priority and need to be part of upcoming releases. Roadmap Communication Material Along with the actual roadmap that is developed, other communication material related to the roadmap that need to be updated as part of the same process would be included. These could include material used by marketing teams to communicate roadmap contents at the appropriate level to different stakeholders, including current and future customers. Execute Roadmap We define the execute roadmap process to include execution of the roadmap through a series of projects and their releases. Figure 6-6 illustrates the execute roadmap process. Input Tools and Techniques Roadmap management Output Plan and execute projects Network roadmap Resource calendars Validated releases Organization input Project deliverables Roadmap update requests Project management plans Updated roadmap metrics Figure 6-6. Execute roadmap process Note Some organizations could choose to make project and release plans part of their roadmap, in which case they may simply execute projects to execute the roadmap. We have made the assumption that, in general, the roadmap could be developed independent of project releases initially. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Execute Roadmap: Tools and Techniques Plan and Execute Projects To execute the roadmap, it needs to be planned al |
ong with the projects through which it will be delivered. To make a roadmap concrete, an organization's agreed-upon horizon of features should be planned as part of the actual projects that have distinct content, timelines, resources, and a proper project plan. For example, it could be that roadmap items for the next 12 months are required to be planned in actual projects and releases and plans available for the same. Once project management plans are available, they should be executed as per plan. As project releases get executed and validated, the actual roadmap feature execution makes progress. Agile projects that feature validation could be tracked as a feature burn down to directly map to roadmap execution. Caution The closer project planning happens to roadmap definition, the better the success of the roadmap. Large time gaps between roadmap definition and project plans lead to stale information, miscommunication, incorrect prioritization, and ineffective products. Execute Roadmap: Output Validated Releases The prime output of the execute roadmap function tends to be product releases that are validated to be of acceptable quality per the project plan. Validated releases could also be verified by roadmap owners to meet the acceptance criteria for the features that were part of the plan. Project Deliverables Along with executable code, which is part of the validated release, the other project deliverables are also important, such as user guides, installation guides, online help manuals, and other configurations input. Roadmap Update Requests When project planning is undertaken, the roadmap's concrete information that could emerge for the actual project and planning constraints may require an update to the roadmap to reflect actual project planning. This may imply that some features do not fit in to the current release and may need to be postponed or swapped with some other features. This should be formulated as a roadmap update request and it needs to go through the process of an update roadmap SO this is ref |
evolution sources, as identified by the operability management plan, that act as triggers to the roadmap review. The changes to the operability aspects monitored and their impact will be quantified as part of the change triggers. Project Bug Lists Quality concerns that impact project completion could also be deciphered with the project bug lists, which basically contains a list of errors that are ranked as to their severity and impact to the project goals and against specific features. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Perform Roadmap Review: Tools and Techniques Variance Analysis In variance analysis techniques, the variance of different dimensions of the project VS. specific goals and measures is computed for different attributes. The variance is quantified and is used to take specific preplanned actions. For example, a schedule variance greater than 10% could trigger action to replan certain features. Trend Analysis In trend analysis techniques, a trend of an item under study is projected by capturing the data and plotting the trend against a timeline. Such a trend chart could indicate where the project is headed and could give early input to the roadmap execution and indicate concerns that need to be addressed to keep the roadmap active. For example, in agile terminology, a release burn down chart is a trend that could help with understanding the health of the release. Management Reviews Most organizations follow a process of review by management representatives, including sponsors for the roadmap, senior management personnel, and other functional owners who have a stake in success of the roadmap and the projects. Management reviews follow a set template in the organization where input is prepared beforehand in a certain manner and is presented during meetings scheduled specifically for that process. These reviews indicate concerns raised by management based on data presented and result in actions that could initiate roadmap change requests. What-if Analysis A what-if analysis uses modeling an |
d simulation techniques to project and assess the impact of certain events on the project and roadmap execution. These results could then be used to understand the criticality and impact of project status on roadmap items and are used to take corrective and preventive actions on the roadmap and the projects under execution. Perform Roadmap Review: Output Roadmap Update Requests The main output of the perform roadmap review process is requests for actual updates of the roadmap. These roadmap update requests need to go through the roadmap change control process. At this stage, these are simply changes that are requested out of the roadmap due to the review process. They are not yet validated and quantified, and they need to be critically reviewed as part of the roadmap change control process before they can be planned as part of the roadmap. Perform Roadmap Change Control We define the perform roadmap change control process to validate the roadmap change requests and accept those that need to be accepted as valid changes and initiated further toward replanning of the roadmap. Figure 6-8 illustrates this process. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Input Tools and Techniques Roadmap management Output Roadmap review board Roadmap update requests Management reviews Approved roadmap What -if analysis update requests Project status reports Organization input Expert judgment Project document updates Figure 6-8. Roadmap change control process Perform Roadmap Change Control: Input Roadmap Update Requests Roadmap update requests should have the following information: Reason for the update By which stakeholder or process the update was created Optional impacts or costs of making the update, including high-level estimates for project resources Impact of not making the update, in terms of cost to the organization, impact on customer, and SO forth Perform Roadmap Change Control: Tools and Techniques Roadmap Review Board We suggest formulation of a roadmap review board with key stakeholders as necessary for the roa |
dmap and the organization with the following focuses: Having necessary product and domain knowledge to assess the impact of the update request Having enough management or sponsor representation to approve the roadmap update requests Meetings of the board on a periodic basis to handle pending update requests Meetings of the board on an ad-hoc request or emergency basis, depending on the importance of the roadmap update request Assessment by the board as to the cost of updating the roadmap VS. the cost of not updating The rationale and decisions should be documented using standard agreed-upon procedures so the workings of the review board can be audited or revisited any time during roadmap execution. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Perform Roadmap Change Control: Output Approved Roadmap Update Requests The prime difference with approved roadmap update requests would be the following information that could be added during the approval: Detailed impact analysis for the update requests Details regarding the approval given and rationale behind it Constraints that could qualify the approval in terms of: Special conditions considered Limitations to the schedule window within which the approved roadmap update request has to be processed Any other constraints Conditions under which the approval could be invalidated (if fany) Plan Resilience Management As mentioned in Chapter 5, the network roadmaps that are able to address resilience requirements are able to withstand challenges longer. Also, challenge response procedures are deployed faster in such networks. In plan resilience management, the focus is to decide the network resilience strategy and put in place a plan for implementing resilience management as part of the roadmap. This process is illustrated in Figure 6-9. Input Tools and Techniques Roadmap charter Output Roadmap Network resilience management plan models Resilience Enterprise/domain Strategies for management plan factors network resilience Organization input Workshops Expert judgment Figure |
6-9. Resilience plan management CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Plan Resilience Management: Input Roadmap Charter As discussed earlier, a roadmap charter provides the bounds and limits for the network roadmap. These inputs help determine the scope of resilience management that can be performed. Roadmap Management Plan Once defined, the roadmap management plan gives critical input regarding the following: Extent to which resilience has to be managed in the network under development Input regarding how resilience management has to be planned Enterprise or Domain Factors Enterprise factors could give input regarding: The level of resilience management accepted as the norm in the industry Resilience management that is being followed by some of the chief competitors Input that could be obtained from standards in the domain regarding resilience management Organization Input Organizational input could include the following: Standards and processes that should be complied with by the resilience management plan Input from other products or roadmaps regarding resilience management Plan Resilience Management: Tools and Techniques Network Resilience Models As discussed earlier in this chapter, the resilience models analysis could be used to understand the methods to be adopted for resilience management in the network. These provide the basis for network resilience management and help define the aspects of resilience, with respect to implementing the same in the network roadmap, before deciding on the strategy for handling the same. Note Please refer to Chapter 5 for a more detailed analysis of prevalent network resilience models. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Strategies for Network Resilience The strategy that is adopted for network resilience actually determines: The effort spent on resilience management The levels of tolerances provided by the network toward various resiliency aspects The effectiveness of the network in being able to evolve in case of challenges and other threats. The |
strategies for network resilience could be any of those defined among ANSA projects, ATIS, CMU-CERT, SUMOWIN, ResiliNets-D2R2, or resilience control loop. Please refer to Chapter 5 for more details on the network resilience strategies. Workshops As discussed earlier, workshops are useful for developing resilience management to bring necessary stakeholders and subject matter experts to brainstorm different options and strategies, to analyze implications, and to implement a plan that would cover all of these aspects and deliver the resilience management plan that is best suited for the network and the organization. Expert Judgment As discussed earlier, expert judgment is always necessary to help tune a process and to optimize input obtained when using other techniques. Expert judgment that comes based on years of experience in the domain and in network development is indispensible and, when used well, can make the resilience management plan stronger and appropriate. Plan Resilience Management: Output Resilience Management Plan The principal output of the plan resilience management process is the resilience management plan, which could contain the following critical input regarding how resilience is to be developed and reviewed: The aspects of resilience that will be actively developed and managed in the network The kinds of challenges to be handled by the network and their priorities The resilience management strategy that is chosen and any customizations added to the strategy to adopt to the network under development The methods by which resilience will be measured and documented and when theses will be updated The ways in which effectiveness of resilience control will be measured and incidents documented for effectiveness Triggers based on which resilience strategy will be executed and how these will be monitored CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Note The following processes for resilience definition will depend on the actual resilience strategy that is used. We have given a set of processes base |
d on the common understanding of framework that needs to be developed for network resilience to be defined. It is possible that this may not apply to a specific resilience strategy used by the actual network. Define Service Levels To be able to define the resilience strategy, you could start by defining the service levels that are acceptable for the network. Figure 6-10 illustrates this process. Input Tools and Techniques Resilience management plan Output Network KPI Enterprise/domain analysis Defined levels of factors Critical incidents service Organization input analysis Figure 6-10. Definning the service levels Define Service Levels: Tools and Techniques Network KPI Analysis To define acceptable levels of service, one could start with critical KPIs that determine how the network performance is perceived. Network KPI analysis tries to determine discrete points determined as a combination of KPI levels that give an indication of availability, dependability, reliability, trustworthiness, and other critical aspects of the network. Critical Incidents Analysis Analysis of critical incidents when the network was subjected to external challenges could also be a valuable tool to determine how the network behaved and to project service levels based on such behavior. Define Service Levels: Output Defined Levels of Service The output of the define service levels process is the actual levels of service definition, which would include: Clearly defined levels of service Each level of service characterized and defined by measurable KPIs of the network Optionally each level of service could also include vulnerabilities for that level of service and the source for it CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Perform Challenge KPI Impact Analysis To be able to define the resilience strategy, you could start with defining the service levels that are acceptable for the network. Figure 6-11 illustrates this process. Input Tools and Techniques Resilience management Output Standard resilience Defined levels of dervice challen |
ge reports Challenge KPI impact Enterprise/domain Critical incidents analysis factors analysis Organization input Figure 6-11. KPI impact analysis Perform Challenge KPI Impact Analysis: Tools and Techniques Standard Resilience Challenge Reports In most network domains, there are published reports of valid challenges and acceptable strategies of responses for these. Analysis of such reports gives good ideas about which critical KPIs are impacted by the challenges and could contain hints about valid response strategies for these. Critical Incidents Analysis As explained earlier, analysis of critical incidents when the network was subjected to external challenges could also be a valuable tool to determine how the network behaved and to understand the KPIs that were impacted during the events. Perform Challenge KPI Impact Analysis: Output Challenge KPI Impact Analysis The output of challenge KPI impact analysis could be: A table that presents the service levels, challenges that impact the service level, and the KPIs that are impacted under such challenges Optionally, it could also include possible mitigation and prevention strategies Define Resilience Strategy Having defined the levels of service and the impact on KPIs by critical challenges, you are ready to define an actual resilience strategy for the network. This process is illustrated in Figure 6-12. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Input Tools and Techniques Resilience management Output Mitigation strategies Defined levels of service Prevention strategies Challenge KPI impact Resilience strategy analysis Critical incidents analysis Enterprise/domain factors Simulation and modeling techniques Organization input Figure 6-12. Resilience strategy Define Resilience Strategy: Tools and Techniques Mitigation Strategies Mitigation strategies include steps that can be taken to recover from the situation or to improve or target a specific level of service including: Acceptable strategies such as redeployment of resources Proactive reduction of service in |
some parts of the network Proactive communication on the diminished levels of service to all consumers and stakeholders These are clearly short-term strategies to ensure the impact of challenges is mitigated and acceptable levels of service are recovered as soon as possible. Prevention Strategies Prevention strategies are more long term and also take more effort to plan and implement. These could include: Structurally improving parts of the system to ensure KPIs are not vulnerable to challenges Proactively improving parts of the system that may prove weak to challenges by improving design, algorithm, technologies, or other implementation aspects or using improved antichallenge measures in the system Simulation and Modeling techniques The use of simulation techniques is one way to develop models to simulate the network at different levels of service, generate the challenges, and observe the impact on the KPIs. The results could be fed into the model to generate possible measures to mitigate and preempt the challenge. Simulation and modeling require a lot of tooling and domain expertise as well as much effort and cost to set up. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Define Resilience Strategy: Output Resilience Strategy The actual resilience strategy as an output should include: A table that presents the service levels, challenges that impact the service level, and the KPIs that are impacted under these challenges with mitigation and prevention strategies A way to document or review the resilience response and ensure the strategy remains relevant and current This information becomes input to the roadmap planning and review to ensure resilience is ensured in the roadmap for the levels of service that are targeted. Perform Network Resilience Review To be able to define the resilience review strategy, we could start with defining the service levels that are acceptable for the network. Figure 6-13 outlines this process. Input Tools and Techniques Resilience management Output KPI variance analysis Resilienc |
e strategy Workshops Resilience strategy Resilience strategy Simulation and modeling updates responses techniques Roadmap update Network KPI reports requests Critical threat reports Figure 6-13. Resilience review strategy Perform Network Resilience Review: Input Resilience Strategy Responses Input as to how the resilience strategy responses actually worked on the network that is deployed is essential for reviewing the resilience strategy itself. Network KPI Reports There should be periodic KPI reports from the network that are deployed with average KPIs, KPI trends, and key KPI variances observed under certain conditions or certain time periods. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Critical Threat Reports Although average KPIs and KPI trends are more periodic in nature, critical threat reports could be received anytime during the network operations. These need to be taken as input and then trigger a nonperiod resilience review to assess the impact of the threat in real time and evolve the resilience strategy. This should include: The nature of the threat or challenge The agency or organization that is issuing the report The details on the KPIs impacted and assessment of impact on the network Perform Network Resilience Review: Tools and Techniques KPI Variance Analysis The simplest analysis tool would be to compare expected KPI variance based on the challenge and review this with actual KPI variances observed, SO that: The root cause for the variance could be found Remedial actions based on the variance could be reflected in the resilience strategy and also form the basis for roadmap update requests Simulation and Modeling Techniques As explained earlier, simulation techniques could be used to compare expected behavior with actual behavior and impact of responses and further fine tune the responses and the resilience strategy. Perform Network Resilience Review: Output Resilience Strategy Updates Based on the review, the actual resilience strategy could be updated to include improved resilience mechani |
sms or to updated the challenge or threat list based on additional input. Any change to the resilience strategy could initiate roadmap update requests that need to be handled as part of roadmap change control. Resilience Management Plan Updates The nature of input received could also initiate updates by the way resilience management is planned. CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Plan Operability Management One of the important aspects of pro-active evolution, as discussed in Chapter 5, is the ability to predict and stay ahead of latest developments and industry trends, which should be incorporated in the network to continue to evolve. We capture input in this category under operability management as well as under the different subcategories of fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security (FCAPS). This is illustrated in Figure 6-14. Input Tools and Techniques Roadmap management plan Output Product analysis Enterprise/domain Industry standards Operability factors Customer management plan Organization input requirement analysis Figure 6-14. Operability management Plan Operability Management: Tools and Techniques Product Analysis Under product analysis, as a technique, it is important to understand which critical aspects of the product should be considered under FCAPS to be able to deliver and evolve a roadmap of good quality, including items like: Support for the latest logging techniques Requirements for troubleshooting issues remotely Ability to monitor critical statistics of system functionality Ability to collect real-time performance data Industry Standards Industry standards could include well-accepted baselines that networks should be compliant with. These include: Competitor network analysis Deployment and operational baselines that could be prevailing in the industry CHAPTER 6 A PROCESS FOR NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Customer Requirement Analysis Customers could also have specific requirements that need to be satisfied as part of the operability requirements, including Specific |
features that are required for regulatory or compliance aspects Features that are required to cover deployment and acceptance tests from network vendors Operational implications derived by customers from their past network analysis Plan Operability Management: Output Operability Management Plan We define the operability management plan as the single source for all information related to aspects of operability that act as input for roadmap evolution, including: Operability aspects that are to be targeted by the network, including ways to baseline different aspects of operability Information about stakeholders that are responsible for operability aspects of the network Information about how aspects of operability are to be monitored for evolving processes and how these should be tracked from industry sources, trade publications, standard bodies, and other networking groups of importance Process steps about how requirements to operability improvement are to be collected and reviewed as part of the roadmap review process Summary It has been our endeavor throughout this chapter to illustrate how a set of processes could be defined under a framework to ensure that the network roadmap stays updated, relevant, and continues to evolve as per changes in the business, market, and industry conditions. As mentioned in Chapter 5, processes and tools are only useful to the extent that they guide the user to think in certain ways. It is the user who needs to be motivated enough to think on the same lines. The most important reason for you to do so may be that, like all human tendencies, the tendency to improve oneself is the most far-reaching in terms of advancement of human prowess. We expect that the process of evolution of network roadmaps will help make the network better in itself, and at the time and to help it evolve and keep itself relevant, effective, and able to meet business needs. Index spectrum harmonization, 66 VoLTE implementation, 67 Advanced Networked Systems Dongles vs. smartphone, 74 Architecture (ANSA), 122 A |
lliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), 122 E, F, G, H Average revenue per user (ARPU), 71 Environment issues feature availability, 69 patent costs, 69 standardization delays, 69 Business Continuity Management UE maturity, 68 System (BCMS), 132 Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Business issues, 70 Access (E-UTRA) band, 10 ARPU, 71 investment, 71 OTT applications, 72 ROI, 71 Internet of Things (IoT) 4G technology, 85 applications, 82 cloud access technologies, 87 Cell outage environmental concerns, 84 advantages, 63 interoperability testing, 84 compensation, 61 objects and devices, 85 detection, 61 RFID, 82 Cloud access technologies, 87 Roadmap, 83 security issues, 84 standardization, 84 ultralight SIMs, 82 Deployment challenges in Australia, 73 in Japan, 73 in South Korea, 73 Key Performance Indicator (KPI), 17 in United States, 73 network overlay strategy, 72 RAN strategy, 72 Deployment issues Long Term Evolution (LTE), 1 backhaul issues, 67 bandwidth options, 12 interference, 65 cell types, 16 multivendor interoperability, 67 E-UTRA band, 10 INDEX Long Term Evolution (LTE) (cont.) optimization phase, 4 KPI validation planning and implementation phase, 4 accessibility, 17 Network resilience, 117-118 availability, 18 ATIS framework, 122 integrity, 18 BlackBerry, 127 mobility, 19 business continuity planning, 131 retainability, 17 alternate facilities, provisioned, 134 traffic model testing, 22 BCMS framework, 132 MIMO, 13 service continuity, 134 beamforming, 14 cultural encouragement, 135 open/closed loop spatial multiplexing, 14 disciplines transmit diversity mode, 14 availability, 121 overload and capacity testing dependability, 121 control plane, 34 disruption tolerance, 121 long duration tests, 36 fault tolerance, 120 user plane, 35 integrity, 121 radio link budgeting maintainability, 121 antenna gains, 8 performability, 122 cable and connector losses, 8 reliability, 121 cell sizing, 9 safety, 121 diversity gains, 8 security, 122 propagation loss, 8 survivability, 120 transmission power, 7 |
traffic tolerance, 121 transmitting and receiving entities, 9 failures and faults, 118 TDD vs. FDD, 13 flash crowd event, 126 traffic model testing mobile wireless networks, 123 dense urban model, 22 organizational factors, 129 highway traffic model, 29 ResiliNets framework, 123-124 rural large cell model, 32 service-level agreements (SLA), 129 urban residential model, 26 slashdot effect, 125 urban small office model, 24 strategy, 122 user data, 34 templates, 125 UE capability, 14 Network roadmap deployment options, 102 executive summary, 99 generic influences, 100 Multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), 2 network options, 100 planned activities, 100 stakeholders business, 105 Neighbor relation customers, 106 configuration, 47 customer support representatives, 108 TNL configurations, 49 cyber attacks, 114 updates disasters, 112 cell detection, 48 financial health, 110 optimization, 50 geopolitical issues, 110 X2 connection setup, 50 impact of technology, 108 Network planning, 1 redundancies, 113 capacity planning, 6 regulatory aspects, 111 coverage planning, 5 standards, 111 dimensioning phase usage models, 103 budget planning process, 3 configuration, 2 interface requirements, 3 user volume and traffic volume, 2 Over the top (OTT), 72 INDEX mobility robustness, 57 early handovers, 59 Physical-layer cell identity (PCID) late handovers, 58 allocation, 44 wrong cell, handover, 60 assignment, 45 Prach-ConfigIndex parameter, 56 collision, 45 RACH Optimization, 54 confusion, 46 Self-organizing networks (SON) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), 142 architecture centralized, 38 distributed, 39 hybrid, 40 Radio access network (RAN), 72 planning phase, 41 Radio-frequency identification (RFID), 82 plug-and-play commissioning, 41 Radio link budgeting, 7 optimization phase, 41 antenna gains, 8 overview, 37 cable and connector losses, 8 self-healing features, 42 (see also Cell outage) cell sizing, 9 self-optimization features, 42 diversity gains, 8 (see also Self-optimization features, SON) propagation loss, 8 s |
elf-planning features transmission power, 8 capital expenditure (CAPEX), 42 transmitting and receiving entities, 9 eNodeB setup, 43 Reference signal received quality (RSRQ), 4 neighbor relation (see Neighbor relation) Reference signal receive power (RSRP), 4 PCID (see Physical-layer cell identity (PCID)) Return of investment (ROI), 71 Service-level agreements (SLA), 129 Roadmap Single-input and single-output (SISO) system, 2 agility, 136 Slashdot effect, 125 mutability, 136 Roadmap management, 139-140 development cycle, 140 evolution, 143 TDD vs. FDD, 13 change control process, 153 Technology roadmap development plan, 143 3GPP roadmap planning, 94 execution process, 150 characteristics, 90 KPI impact analysis, 159 financial measurements, 91 network roadmap, 147 high level view, 98 operability management plan, 163 Internet of Things (IoT), 93 processes, 143 low level view, 97 resilience plan management, 155 management process, 91 resilience review strategy, 161 mapping process, 92 resilience strategy, 159 medium fidelity medium view, 96 review process, 152 organizational practices, 93 service levels, 158 principles, 90 execution, 141 product meeting, 92 factors affecting, 142 specifications and technical reports, 95 PMBOK framework, 142 stakeholders, 94 Traffic profiles, 74 data vs. voice usage, 75 dongles vs. smartphone, 74 Self-optimization features, SON future trends, 81 Internet users, 77 dynamic type, 53 smartphone users, 78 frequency reuse, 53 Transport network layer (TNL), 49 physical resource blocks (PRBs), 53 reuse mechanism, 54 static type, 53 V, W, X, Y, Z load balancing strategy, 61 Voice over LTE (VoLTE), 67 4G: Deployment Strategies and Operational Implications Trichy Venkataraman Krishnamurthy Rajaneesh Shetty Apress 4G: Deployment Strategies and Operational Implications Copyright © 2014 by Trichy Venkataraman Krishnamurthy and Rajaneesh Shetty This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights |
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Board: Steve Anglin, Gary Cornell, Louise Corrigan, Jonathan Gennick, Robert Hutchinson, Michelle Lowman, James Markham, Matthew Moodie, Jeff Olson, Jeffrey Pepper, Douglas Pundick, Ben Renow-Clarke, Gwenan Spearing, Matt Wade, Steve Weiss Coordinating Editor: Mark Powers Copy Editor: Mary Bearden Compositor: SPi Global Indexer: SPi Global Artist: SPi Global Cover Designer: Anna Ishchenko Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business Media New York, 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail orders-ny@springer-sbm.com or visit www.springeronline.com. Apress Media, LLC is a California LLC and the sole member (owner) is Springer Science + Business Media Finance Inc (SSBM Finance Inc). SSBM Finance Inc is a Delaware corporation. For information on translations, please e-mail rights@apress.com, or visit www.apress.com. Apress and friends of ED books may be purchased in bulk for academic, corporate, or promotional use. eBook versions and licenses are also available for most titles. For more information, reference our Special Bulk Sales-eBook Licensing web page at www.apress.com/bulk-sales. Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this text is available to readers at ww.apress.com/9781430263258. For detailed information about how to locate your book's source code, go to www.apress.com/source-code. To my parents To Ramya for all love and support To Advu & Advi for bearing with appa To SG Ganesh for inspiring me -Trichy Venkataraman Krishnamurthy This book is dedicated to my dear father Sudhakar Shetty, my mother Veena, my dear wife, Rashmi, and my two little sons Aarav and Atharv who have been and remain to be my inspiration and support. -Rajaneesh Shetty Contents About the Authors Introduction Chapter 1: Network Planning Dimensioning Phase Configuration for the Site User and Traffic Volume Estimation Coverage and Capacity Estimation Planning and Implementation Phase Optimization Phase Coverage Planning Cap |
acity Planning Improve Capacity for a Particular Service Area Radio Link Budget for LTE LTE Band Bandwidth Options TDD VS. FDD UE Capabilities Cell Sizes: Femto VS. Micro VS. Macro LTE Performance Testing Key Performance Indicator Verification CONTENTS Traffic Model Testing Dense Urban Model Urban Small Office Model Urban Residential Area Model Highway Model Rural Large Cell Model Overload and Capacity Testing Control Plane Overload and Capacity Testing: User Plane Overload and Capacity Testing Long Duration Testing Summary Chapter 2: Self-Organizing Networks in LTE Deployment Introduction to Self-organizing Networks SON Architecture Centralized SON Distributed SON Hybrid SON SON Features Self-planning Features Self-optimization Features Self-healing Features Automatic Neighbor Relation Commissioned Neighbor Cell Configurations Automatic Neighbor Relation Updates SON and Self-Optimization Motivation of Intercell Interference Coordination Principle of ICIC and Frequency Reuse RACH Optimization Mobility Robustness Optimization Load Balancing CONTENTS SON and Self-healing Cell Outage Detection Cell Outage Compensation Benefit of Cell Outage Compensation Summary Chapter 3: Deployment Challenges in Evolving 4G Technology-Related Challenges Interference Issues Spectrum Harmonization Voice Over LTE Implementation Multivendor Interoperability Issues Related to Backhaul Environment Issues UE Maturity Feature Availability Standardization Delays Patent Costs Business Challenges Investment Issues Average Revenue per User and Return on Investment Periods The Changing Marketplace A Survey of LTE Deployments Around the World South Korea Japan Australia United States Traffic Profiles and Other Evolution Challenges Recent Trends in Telecom Customer Profiles Evolution CONTENTS Future Traffic Profiles and Trends The Internet of Things 4G and the Internet of Things Summary Chapter 4: Network Roadmaps What Is a Technology Roadmap? Understand Need for a Roadmap Formulation of a Technology Roadmap What Is a Network Roadmap? Network Opt |
ions Deployment Options Usage Models What Influences Network Roadmap Planning? Key Stakeholders for Roadmap Inputs Known Factors Disruptive (Risk) Factors Summary Chapter 5: Network Roadmap Evolution Planned Evolution Network Resilience Reactive Evolution to Sudden Changes A Generic Template A Specific Example Anticipation of Changes in Industry The Decline of BlackBerry Future Goals and Services from a Business or Organization Perspective Organizational Factors Response Team in Place Business Continuity Planning Cultural Encouragement to Embrace Futuristic and Even Fantastic Scenarios CONTENTS Roadmap Mutability Roadmap Agility Summary Chapter 6: A Process for Network Roadmap Evolution Aspects of Network Roadmap Management Roadmap Development Cycle Roadmap Execution: Programs, Projects, and Portfolios Factors Affecting Roadmap Development Project Management Processes Develop Roadmap Management Plan Develop Roadmap Management Plan: Tools and Techniques Define Roadmap Execute Roadmap Perform Roadmap Review Perform Roadmap Change Control Plan Resilience Management Define Service Levels Perform Challenge KPI Impact Analysis Define Resilience Strategy Perform Network Resilience Review Plan Operability Management Summary Index About the Authors T. V. Krishnamurthy has worked in the telecommunications industry for more than 15 years. He has been strongly involved in radio technologies for nearly a decade while working with Siemens communications and Nokia Siemens networks and now the Radisys Corporation. He has been involved in varying roles from software development to team leadership to feature specifications and architecture work and project management, with varied radio technologies like 3G-RNC, WCDMA BTS, WiMAX BTS, and now recently LTE. He has also worked in specifying and developing features for Internet HSPA. His interests include software engineering, requirements engineering, QoS, and scheduler implementations. He also has published papers in the areas of knowledge management and software engineering. He hold |
s an IEEE CSDP certification and is a qualified CSDP trainer, a practicing PMI certified project management professional (PMP), and a PMP trainer. He lives and works out of Bangalore, India. Rajaneesh Shetty is a telecom specialist with nearly 13 years of continuous and progressive international (multicultural) experience in development and testing lifecycle of telecom products using state-of-the-art technologies, with positions spanning development to technical leadership and management. He has worked on telecom projects with Infosys in core networks, Nokia Siemens networks in radio networks, and now in RMA (radio mobile access) with LTE solutions. He has experience in diverse network technologies such as LTE-TDD, LTE-FDD, UMTS, 3G, GSM, GPRS, HSPA, RRC, MAC, layer 3, core networks, HLR, IN, and billing. He has rich experience in various activities like feature analysis, specification, development, integration, and testing. He has also been involved in technical management of telecom system projects. His current interests include LTE system testing strategies, self-organizing networks, and enhanced customer experience. He lives and works out of Bangalore, India. 5G NR ARCHITECTURE, TECHNOLOGY, IMPLEMENTATION, AND OPERATION OF 3GPP NEW RADIO STANDARDS SASSAN AHMADI 5G NR 5G NR Architecture, Technology, Implementation, and Operation of 3GPP New Radio Standards Sassan Ahmadi ACADEMIC PRESS An imprint of Elsevier ELSEVIER Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier 125 London Wall, London EC2Y 5AS, United Kingdom 525 B Street, Suite 1650, San Diego, CA 92101, United States 50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on h |
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broadcast channel (MU-MIMO) broadcast control channel broadcast channel List of Abbreviations bit error rate binary phase shift keying base station binding support function buffer status report bandwidth bandwidth part carrier-to-interference ratio carrier aggregation CACLR cumulative ACLR CAZAC constant amplitude zero auto-correlation cell broadcast center cell broadcast entity code block group CBGTI code block group transmission information contention based random access component carrier control channel element cumulative distribution function code division multiplexing CD-SSB cell defining SSB carrier frequency offset contention free random access cell global identifier carrier indicator field cubic metric commercial mobile alert service connection mobility control coordinated multi-point CORESET control resource set cyclic prefix common phase error CP-OFDM cyclic prefix-OFDM channel quality indicator common resource block cyclic redundancy check cell range extension CSI-RS resource indicator C-RNTI cell RNTI cell-specific reference signal common subframe allocation channel state information CSI-IM CSI interference measurement CSI-RS CSI reference signal CSI-RS CSI reference signal CSI-RSRP CSI reference signal received power CSI-RSRQ CSI reference signal received quality CSI-SINR CSI signal-to-noise and interference ratio codeword continuous wave List of Abbreviations digital to analog converter downlink assignment index dedicated control channel downlink control information discrete Fourier transform DFT-S-OFDM DFT-spread-OFDM downlink DL TFT downlink traffic flow template DL-SCH downlink shared channel DM-RS demodulation reference signal data network data network name direction of arrival data radio bearer discontinuous reception dedicated traffic channel discontinuous transmission DwPTS downlink pilot time slot extended access barring E-UTRAN cell global identifier E-CID enhanced cell-ID (positioning method) EPS connection management explicit congestion notification eICIC enhanced inter-cell interference |
coordination effective isotropic radiated power equivalent isotropic sensitivity EPS mobility management E-UTRAN Node B/evolved node B evolved packet core extended power headroom report energy per resource element evolved packet system E-RAB E-UTRAN radio access bearer E-SMLC evolved serving mobile location centre earthquake and tsunami warning system E-UTRA evolved UTRA E-UTRAN evolved UTRAN error vector magnitude fractional bandwidth frequency division duplex frequency division multiplexing fast Fourier transform fully qualified domain name frequency range frequency range 1 frequency range 2 fixed reference channel file transfer protocol guaranteed bit rate guaranteed flow bit rate xviii List of Abbreviations global navigation satellite system guard period global positioning system generic public subscription identifier global synchronization channel number guard time GPRS tunneling protocol GUAMI globally unique AMF identifier GUMMEI globally unique MME identifier globally unique temporary identifier gateway hybrid ARQ HARQ-ACK hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement HetNet heterogeneous network hyper frame number handover home subscriber server hypertext markup language inter-cell interference coordination in-channel selectivity identity in-device coexistence information element Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Internet Engineering Task Force inverse fast Fourier transform inter-modulation distortion IP multimedia sub-system INT-RNTI interruption RNTI internet of things internet protocol in-phase/quadrature interference rejection combining I-RNTI inactive RNTI inter-symbol interference industrial, scientific, and medical ITU-R radiocommunication sector of the international telecommunication union L1-RSRP layer 1 reference signal received power local area logical channel group logical channel identifier low density parity check layer indicator log likelihood ratio low-noise amplifier long term evolution MAC-I message authentication code for integrity maximum a posteriori probability mu |
ltimedia broadcast/multicast service maximum bit rate List of Abbreviations MBSFN multimedia broadcast multicast service single frequency network multi-cell/multicast coordination entity modulation and coding scheme maximum data burst volume minimization of drive tests maximum flow bit rate master information block multiple-input multiple-output maximum likelihood detection mobility management entity minimum mean-square error mobile network operator maximal ratio combining machine-type communications MU-MIMO multi-user MIMO N3IWF non-3GPP interworking function negative acknowledgement network access identifier non-access stratum next hop chaining counter NR cell global identifier neighbor cell relation neighbor cell relation table network domain security network exposure function network function NG application protocol next generation application protocol next hop key NAS node selection function neighbor cell relation new radio NR-ARFCN NR absolute radio frequency channel number network repository function neighbor relation table NSI ID network slice instance identifier NSSAI network slice selection assistance information network slice selection function network slice selection policy NWDAF network data analytics function operating band unwanted emissions orthogonal cover code orthogonal frequency division multiplexing OFDMA orthogonal frequency division multiple access OMC-ID operation and maintenance centre identity out-of-band (emission) OTA sensitivity directions declaration over-the-air power amplifier peak-to-average power ratio List of Abbreviations physical broadcast channel prioritized bit rate primary component carrier paging control channel PCell primary cell policy control function PCFICH physical control format indicator channel paging channel physical cell identifier policy and charging rules function PDCCH physical downlink control channel packet data convergence protocol packet data network packet detection rule PDSCH physical downlink shared channel protocol data unit permanent equipment identif |