NEW DELHI: Japanese multinational IT services and networking equipment company Fujitsu said it is working with partners to develop strategies for upgrading the older operations support systems (OSS) to cloud-based, software-defined architecture.
“We've been working with major global telecom companies in America and other countries on how to upgrade their overall OSS stack, because there is a push for the cloud and because everything is software-defined these days. Most of them (telcos) have a legacy in the way they would manage their OSS platforms,” Manoj Nair, head of India Global Delivery Center (GDC) at Fujitsu, told ETTelecom in an interview.
Nair declined to comment on details.
He said the next generation of OSS platforms will be deployed on a mix of public and private cloud. “We've been working with telecom companies in that area and strategizing around proof-of-concepts on how the shift can happen.”
“We do not have our full OSS stack, but we are working with partners,” the director said, adding that the legacy architecture and interoperability-related issues hinder the upgrade of operational support systems, which can be addressed with Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) and Cloud RAN.
“Those are the things we would focus on,” Nair said.
The Tokyo-headquartered company is among the industry's top Open RAN vendors along with Mavenir, NEC, Altiostar and more. Open RAN as a concept enables the disaggregation of hardware and software components, allowing telecom providers to collaborate with various suppliers to build interface-driven mobile networks, such as 4G and 5G.
Fujitsu, for example, is one of the selected suppliers AT&T under the US telco's $14 billion deal with Sweden Ericsson building a network based on open interface specifications. AT&T expects to have fully integrated open RAN sites working with Ericsson and Fujitsu by 2024.
Fujitsu has about 9,500 employees in India and has significant expansion planned for FY25. However, it has no commercial or pilot contracts with the country's telecom companies. From here it serves its global regions such as Japan, Asia Pacific and Europe, working with technology companies such as SAP, ServiceNow and Salesforce and more, for support, project implementation, consulting and more.
“We are open to that (in partnership with Indian telecom companies), but so far we have not actively pursued that,” Nair said.
He said the competitiveness of India's domestic telecom stack, which is being deployed by a Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)-led consortium for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited's (BSNL) latest mobile networks, will depend on pricing, flexibility and interoperability.
On the Indian Artificial Intelligence (AI) mission, Fujitsu CEO described it as “critical” and underlined that the country accounts for 16% of the global AI workforce.
He said companies are looking at India as a hub for developing AI-powered technologies to solve tomorrow's problems. “There is enormous potential in all the digitalization initiatives that the government is taking.”
