Verizon accelerates 5G rollouts with automation platform

Network Alpha Factory’s initial work in migrating consumers and some enterprises “is already giving us dividends, but next year we are going to move more enterprise customers,” says Singh, noting that the tool may have to be tweaked somewhat to handle the biggest migrations, which can get tricky.

“There’s a lot of coordination and cleanup of data, workflow, and, with some customers, circuits,” he says. “It’s a combination of all those elements we put into this automation factory.”

Business wise, Network Alpha Factory has thus far been a win-win for the telecommunications giant and its customers, Singh says. According to Verizon, the platform enables network operations and sales organizations to migrate traffic from legacy networks to the new iEN in a coordinated, less disruptive manner, giving customers access to higher speeds and lower latency while enabling Verizon to reduce network ownership costs.

IDC analyst Jason Leigh says Verizon made the right move to build a tool to facilitate customer migrations, but adds that there will be challenges whenever a CIO or C-suite move their data and traffic to new environments.

“Tools to facilitate the migration process from legacy network architectures to 5G, and eventually 6G, are critical to operators. The speed at which these networks are operating, and the immense data flows transiting the network, necessitate dynamic tools to automate and streamline migration and optimize day-to-day operations,” says Leigh, research manager of mobility and 5G at IDC. “A less-automated approach lengthens the migration process and opens the door to ‘hiccups’ in functionality.”

Inside the ‘factory’

Aside from its core role as a migration platform, Network Alpha Factory also delivers network scalability and a bird’s-eye view of an enterprise’s entire network landscape, including where upgrades may be needed.