Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1414667
October/November/December 2021 I 29 IN SUMMARY The evolution to a fully orchestrated, integrated, and auto- mated assurance solution may be a journey, but it is one that has a clear roadmap (Figure 5). There are well defined steps that can be taken to move from basic fiber mon- itoring to each new level of automated assurance—steps that are founded in a solid business case of lowering operating expense (OPEX) and delivering a better, more robust network while exceeding customer expectations. FIGURE 5: The journey to AI-driven fiber monitoring. Harris Broadcast, ADTRAN, and Accedian Networks, focusing on optical transport and carrier Ethernet service assurance and performance monitoring. Ken holds a bachelor of applied science degree in electrical engineering from Queen's University at Kingston Ontario. He can be reached at ken.gold@exfo.com. REFERENCES: 1. "Data Center Interconnect Market… Global Forecast to 2025," MarketsandMarkets, April 2020. 2. Bouzas, Santiago. "Why encryption is still impacting mobile video quality of experience," Telcoms.com, 17 June 2019. 3. Kemal, Mehmet. "Omdia Network Traffic Forecast Report: 2019-2024," Omdia, 05 Aug 2020. 4. Vailshery L. Sujay. "IoT connected devices worldwide 2030," Statista, 22 January 2021. AI-Driven Assurance Enhances DCI Profitability and Reputation The DCI market is becoming increasingly more com- petitive. Demand is going through a period of aggressive acceleration with providers needing to deliver more and deliver faster, while also increasing profitability. The solution is not simply more data or big data—that is too slow and costly. The answer lies within smart, adaptive, real-time impact-aware insights. Real-time network and environmentally contextualized, customer impact-aware actionable insights help speed resolution and prevent faults from developing, thereby avoiding penalties, driving down costs, and creating a service-driven competitive advantage. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Ken Gold, director of test, monitoring and analytics solutions at EXFO has a diverse background in the telecommunications and ICT industries spanning more than 30 years. He is currently focused on understanding how virtualization and 5G will change the way people and machines communicate and how operators will leverage automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to better manage the customer's quality of experience in this new reality, which in the end is all that matters. Prior to joining EXFO, Ken held leadership roles in solutions marketing and product line management with Nortel,