Many enterprises are migrating to advanced networks to improve network quality, offer better user experiences and enhance operational efficiency. The Shabodi engineering team has had extensive experience working with several  enterprises on their advanced network deployment journey. And I am here to share some of these experiences from the trenches.

Moving the needle from the implementation of a private advanced network to taking its full advantage

Business and engineering teams work for months, in some cases, even more than an year, to roll out private advanced network deployment. It’s an excellent achievement but slowly, a realisation starts to set in; that upgraded network is great news, but the real business value is in software applications. And most of the times, these domain applications don’t leverage the advantages of an upgraded network. Resource-constrained application teams are suddenly burdened with the task of upgrading applications, much of which requires significant knowledge of network programming and best practices. 

By the time these realisations fully set in, advanced network deployment has already taken significant time. So, stakeholders expect application developers to complete the integration and demonstrate value immediately. Marathon meetings take place between application developers, domain specialists, multiple network vendors and subject matter experts to derive a  typical multi-step migration to-do list. This list is endless but some of the key activities include

1. Update resource management strategy for UEs.
2. Review manuals and published APIs of the advanced network vendor (multiple vendors in some cases)
3. Develop comprehensive sequence of API calls for registration/onboarding with network. 
4. Research on the API parameters of different core Network Functions (PCF, SMF, AMF and more) of private 5G provider or other advanced networks.
5. Develop a library of functions to support resource management in the deployed advanced network.
6. Research the events and notifications in the core and RAN network functions.
7. Develop xApp and rApp agents to report the status of RAN.
8. Develop the Application Function (AF) using the library provided in steps 7 and 8.
9. Develop a security module (LAAS) to control the access to network.
10. Develop a monitoring module to log, report, and audit the transactions and events.
11. Integrate to/or develop a new OAMP module to automate the operations and management.
12. Integrate the network with OSS/BSS.

Evidently, the migration to 5G is highly complex, with time-intensive elements like research, design and development spanning across 5G Core, RAN, OSS/BSS and Edge systems. Application developers understand business domain/software programming, but reviewing telecom specs and network programming brings its own challenges. Bringing in new providers or updates to the network means repeating the process for application developers. Eventually, more frustration, more expenses, more complexity.

Remove advanced network app development complexities and set up your developers for success with Shabodi NetAware

Shabodi NetAware is built for application developers with the single most important objective of restricting and removing network programming complexities.

With Shabodi NetAware, all the developers need to do is:

1. Provide a resource management strategy for the UEs in network (Plan)
2. Integrate Shabodi NetAware (Plug)
3. Develop Application Function (AF) using Shabodi NetAware (Play)

That’s 3 steps vs. the to-do list of 12 and counting.

With Shabodi NetAware, leveraging advanced networks in business applications literally becomes Plug and Play. Application developers can continue to focus on the business domain and leverage the benefits of the new advanced network like LTE, 5G, Wifi6, and 6G, leaving the complexity to Shabodi engineering.