Network as a Service (NaaS) Demand is Changing the Enterprise Market

The demands placed on communications service providers (CSPs) by enterprise customers are high and evolving. Network as a Service (NaaS) is an exciting new opportunity for CSPs to serve the important enterprise market segment. As enterprise organizations migrate widely to cloud usage models, NaaS not only revolutionizes the network, but also provides a service that improves enterprise customer experience and retention.

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What exactly is Network as a Service?

NaaS enables customers to purchase network and value-added services as well as computing and network resources as a service from CSPs instead of purchasing them themselves. It is the ultimate solution for enterprises to meet changing business needs, new business applications, and rapid changes in technology and security threats while reducing costs.

NaaS enables enterprise network and IT experts to focus on core business needs instead of being endlessly busy building, maintaining and updating WAN and network solutions and applications.

Essentially, NaaS is presented to enterprise customers in a single self-service portal along with a service and application marketplace. Enterprise customers can then order and co-manage their services on demand to enhance agility and scalability capabilities. Value-added applications and infrastructure can be purchased and allocated in near real time. For example, managed SD-WAN, security and unified communications as a service, as well as cloud computing, data centers, infrastructure and even third-party virtual network functions (VNFs) and applications.

What can Network as a Service offer to enterprises?

Enterprises care about delivering solutions quickly to end customers, whose needs are constantly evolving and growing. The do-it-yourself approach has been used for decades. However, transformation efforts across enterprises around the world and the migration to the cloud are causing a fundamental rethinking of this approach. In this rapidly changing atmosphere, most enterprises simply cannot afford to invest the time to build and maintain their own networks if they want to keep up with competition and customer expectations.

By combining secure SD-WAN connectivity with service lifecycle management automation, a self-service portal, and a value-added services marketplace, CSPs offer enterprises the following benefits:

• Enhanced selection
• Increased agility
• Easy network operation
• Reduce costs

Enterprise data centers cannot compete with the capabilities and pace of innovation offered by the likes of Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Likewise, if enterprises choose to build their own SD-WAN and next-generation network and security services, they will not offer the same complete or agile capabilities and services as CSPs, nor will they support features like managed NaaS services.

What does Network as a Service enable for CSPs?

By increasing network flexibility through virtualization and automation, CSPs can precisely meet the needs of their demanding enterprise customers, thereby promoting themselves in the eyes of their customers and improving retention. CSPs are now able to provide greater value to their customers and increase their "stickiness" through bundled services that will support their customers' cloud and digital transformation.

Not only can CSPs provide enterprises with new levels of agility and speed, but they can also improve their own business success. By offering NaaS to enterprises, service providers can increase their revenue streams and time to market. Through an online portal, customers can instantly access new services, applications, and tools. Automation achieved in this way eliminates time-consuming and expensive manual processes, further improving the customer experience.

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Case Study: Tier1 APAC operator leverages Amdocs’ NaaS solution

To better illustrate how NaaS can work for enterprises, a Tier 1 APAC operator implemented Amdocs’ solution and serves as a useful case study.

Before embarking on the path to NaaS, operators’ services were designed by inserting physical network functions into rigid physical networks, which were isolated from the Operation Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS). Providing new services was mainly a manual operation, requiring operators to send technicians to the field to install and configure equipment.

The results are:

• Long time to provide service and correct problems
• Operating costs are higher than necessary
• Slow innovation
• Limited agility

To successfully transform its service offering and expand it to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), operators recognize that automation is essential to meet the growing demands of new customers and provide a better customer experience. Operators' NaaS offerings include managed SD-WAN services and a variety of security, network and unified communications services based on VNFs deployed in virtual CPE (vCPE) or the operator's telco cloud.

Operators aim to greatly improve agility, flexibility and efficiency by eliminating manual processes and integrating their OSS, BSS and networks.

There are three main business objectives:

• Automate operations and reduce operating expenses
• Increase revenue by expanding the market
• Accelerate innovation and reduce time to market

Case Study Results Using Amdocs' Scalable Solutions

Powered by the Linux Foundation’s Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), Amdocs’ programmable NaaS solution for operators is used to automate network service operations and processes across multiple network domains.

The solution, NFV Orchestration, integrates with existing BSS and OSS to fully automate the ordering of products and services. This allows enterprise customers to fully utilize the self-service portal and marketplace to order, provision and monitor network and value-added services.

Using Amdocs’ solution, the previously manual service process is fully automated. The solution goes a step further by simplifying the onboarding, testing and certification of VNFs in the system, significantly reducing time to market.

The implementation of the NaaS offering will enable operators to expand their customer base to include mid-sized enterprises and SMBs, while the new portal will simplify the provision of additional VAS and virtual network services.

NaaS is an emerging opportunity for service providers

Service providers looking to expand their offerings for enterprise customers need to start looking into NaaS. As these customers seek to respond faster to dynamic business needs, find additional ways to cut costs and have more control over their networks, NaaS provides a solution and elevates the relationship between CSPs and their customers.

CSPs can accelerate their network service transformation and reduce investments by implementing field-proven technologies from advanced software and service providers such as Amdocs.

To stay ahead of the curve, protect their position and provide scalable services and solutions to enterprise customers, NaaS is the way forward. Service providers offering NaaS are leveraging the latest technologies that support digital and cloud transformation, helping enterprises focus on their capabilities to thrive in their business.