OPT/NET B.V. welcomes Telecommunications industry luminary Brian Levy to the advisory board
The Netherlands, 27/11/20
We’re excited to announce that Brian Levy is officially on board as an Advisor to OPT/NET B.V., and has been active in this role from the 1st of October of this year onwards.
Brian has been prolific in the Telecommunications industry for over forty years. His previous roles include: Group Technology Officer of British Telecom, Global Chief Technology Officer for Hewlett Packard in the media & communications business, CTO for Applications Software then CTO EMEA for Juniper Networks, CTO EMEA for Brocade, and Director of Network Services AT&T EMEA. He is a well-known luminary in the Telecommunications industry and is often invited to present at relevant conferences and lead innovation projects.
We believe having Brian on board at this critical juncture in OPT/NET’s trajectory will help bolster our ongoing efforts, in particular, to further increase the commercial adoption of OptOSS AI — the most complete AIOps platform for telecoms.
Besides publishing the standard press release, we thought it would be great to sit down with Brian to quickly pick his brain on the topic of AI and get to know a little more about why he decided to work with us at OPT/NET B.V.
The synopsis of the conversations we’ve had with Brian are summarised below, but otherwise you can watch the (zoom-enabled) conversation on here on YouTube.
Why is AI seen as being important for the future of Telecommunications Service Providers?
Over the past few years, the operational complexity of Telecom networks has increased dramatically. The amount of data being carried by these networks and being generated by the network infrastructure itself has risen at an exponential rate.
We have reached an inflection point where the current human operator and operational systems capabilities of the Telecom Service Providers cannot cope any longer. Further, with the advent of nascent technologies like Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) the complexity of network operations is being catapulted to a whole new level.
Many Operators are now talking about the need for an “Autonomous Network” — a network that has a great deal of imbedded intelligence and that has the capacity to make many operational decisions with little to no human intervention. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) are key here given the massive volumes of both customer and operational data that need to be processed in real time at superhuman speed in order to meet the operational requirements. It is no longer the case that AI/ML is a nice addition to operational capacities, it is now an absolute requirement.
Beyond servicing the operational needs of Telecommunications networks, Operators will also benefit from AI/ML in terms of providing the best customer experience for their customers, by better understanding the nature and scale of flows of disparate customer data across their infrastructure. These tools will be crucial in obtaining valuable insights from a veritable ocean of information and to optimise the transmission of particular services to meet the required service levels.
What are some of the biggest pitfalls you’ve seen hampering the adoption of AI in the industry?
AI/ML innovation and expertise is, generally speaking, not coming from the traditional telecommunications vendors. There is a whole new ecosystem evolving and this ecosystem is not bounded by the telecommunications industry itself. AI/ML can be applied in so many areas outside of telecommunications. So, operators are having to work with generally smaller companies who are willing to work with them on applying AI/ML to their particular needs and in a collaborative way rather than setting requirements and asking for bids against them as they have done in the past.
There a few folks working in Telecommunications operations who understand AI/ML and it is going to take time for them to acquire and train the folks they will need on their side. The technology is also evolving fast and the needs are growing rapidly along with it.
One other issue here is that there are little to no standards for how AI/ML systems can connect to networks today and a deal of work needs to be done in this area in particular.
All of this represents a considerable, although not insurmountable, challenge for the operators.
What inspired you to become an Advisor to OPT/NET?
I knew the COO — Jan Stip — well and he introduced me to the company. I was intrigued by their technology and the team. They had a more comprehensive solution than I had seen before with some unique patented elements and had already developed a compelling platform for Telecommunications Operators specifically — OptOSS AI.
OPT/NET has a strong OSS heritage and the fact that OptOSS AI already “understands” the network management protocols gives them a significant advantage in connecting their technology to existing networks today. The platform can process vast amounts of data in real time and has patented technology which makes it more much more efficient in doing so than other solutions. As a consequence of this, the hardware platform required is also significantly smaller for any given need.
Another key differentiator is that their solution is able to process — in real time — both unstructured and structured data with advanced pattern recognition and then
pass patterns on to a supervised machine learning segment that can classify
them and even initiate scripts for remediation etc. This allows for the software to make an impact quickly and start returning real value in a very short period of time.The OptOSS AI solution also has advanced visualisation tools that enable operators to quickly understand any abnormal behaviours in Telecommunications networks and greatly helps in rapidly and intuitively interpreting the root causes.
I am excited to be working with OPT/NET, who are a leading innovator in this space and to be working with a very talented team to bring powerful new solutions to the industry.
About OPT/NET B.V.
OPT/NET B.V. is a team that builds comprehensive AI products based on decades of hardcore critical industry experience. Having served and protected the networks of clients all over the globe, the OPT/NET team was specially suited to develop a suite of advanced AI products capable of dealing with an ever-increasing volume of data and complexity. Initially serving as a tool for our own telecom consulting practice, OPT/NET’s AI engine has grown into a series of stand-alone platforms with unlimited potential across a variety of critical and data-intensive industries.
We believe in making humans superhuman, not replacing them. The OPT/NET AI Engine provides domain experts in both structured and unstructured data environments the ability to rapidly develop advanced real-time AI solutions that help them do their jobs more effectively, without requiring an advanced degree in data-science. Importantly, our solutions are human-driven, AI-assisted.
