As automation becomes an increasingly large part of workflows across the connectivity industry, how much control should we give AI over decision-making processes? On Episode 26 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast, we spoke with Wim te Niet, the VP of Global Sales and Service Assurance Solutions at EXFO, about his perspective on the topic. Here are his thoughts: 

What are your views on automation in zero-touch operations, and what are the benefits of moving to automation over manual testing methods, for example?

If you look at what’s driving automation, there are three factors. Look what happened to service providers. Over the past few years, their cost level has gone up significantly. There have been significant salary increases, and we’ve all noticed what happened to our energy bills. Now if you look at service providers and how much energy they use in their data centers, they are running a network that is very energy-intensive. Those different factors have led to a significant increase in OpEx. 

One of the key benefits of moving to automation is OpEx reduction. If tasks are automated instead of people doing the task, that drives your your OpEx cost down. The second key driver, from my perspective, is customer experience. If you think about things like time to repair, response time, and failures in the network, driving that down through automation obviously has a direct impact on customer satisfaction, customer experience, and customer retention. The third factor is network virtualisation. These days, they’re increasingly cloud-based. 

Previously, if you were in London, you would have a physical connection to a voice switch somewhere in the city. You would be able to pinpoint that, if your line is down, there’s probably something wrong with that switch or the connection between you and that switch. In a virtualized and cloud-based environment, there is complete decoupling of the service from the physical location. With the increasing number of devices on the network, and a decoupling of logical and physical infrastructure, network complexity usually goes up, which also drives the need for automation. 

What are the barriers to achieving zero-touch operations?

A major barrier is the psychological impact. Do you let these decisions be made by a machine? That’s something we need to overcome. If you use the analogy to self-driving cars, one challenge is to develop the technology that provides a fully self-driving experience. The producers of these systems say they are more reliable than human beings because they’re quicker and better at decision-making. But actually saying, ‘Okay, we’re now going to leave the decision to the machine,’ is a big thing because if it goes wrong (or when it goes wrong), then there is a real problem. 

If you use that analogy to the service provider network, if your OODA-based decision causes a massive network outage because it makes the wrong decision, as the CEO or CTO of that operator, you’ve got to explain. It’s a technology that is not completely mature, and there’s the psychological elements. Do you actually leave that to the machine, or do you still want somebody with human intelligence to look at it? I think the latter will still be the case for a while to come, which is actually a good thing.

To hear more from Wim, tune into Episode 26 of The Connectivity Matters Podcast here.

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