As 5G continues to evolve, it also continues to become more complex. Virtualization and disaggregation are happening in tandem with deployment of network workloads in hybrid cloud environments, including distributed clouds deep in the network at radio sites or even at customer premises. As a result, configuring, provisioning and assuring networks through manual — or even the standard automation strategies that telcos have been relying on for years — is no longer possible, from an economic or practical perspective. Therefore, applying automation techniques enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in as many network operations as possible — referred to as AIOps, or Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations — is emerging as the only way for telcos to keep up.
