Ericsson introduced a modular version of its Dynamic Orchestration that it says will help operators transition from a physical network to a virtual network at their own speed. Specifically, the orchestration platform allows operators to deliver some services in the traditional physical way while virtualizing others.

According to Ida La Spisa, acting head of Ericsson’s digital business systems, the Dynamic Orchestration is integrated with many of Ericsson’s OSS/BSS products such as Cloud Manager. Some operators may want to transition to a single virtual network function (VNF), while others may want to convert a whole stack. “Operators can buy a single product, but the majority prefer to reduce the complexity of the single product and buy a pre-integrated suite with uses cases in the box,” she said.

The Dynamic Orchestration will rapidly validate VNFs and onboard new services as well as provide inventory, resource and capacity management, and service assurance. La Spisa said every operator has a different starting point, and some want to completely transform their OSS stack while others have different products from different vendors and may prefer to convert one application at a time.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions is already using Ericsson’s Dynamic Orchestrator. The company announced in February that Ericsson was providing it with dynamic orchestration and service assurance as well as helping third parties create, test, and on-board VNFs into Verizon’s network.

Verizon also said it was using the vendor’s software so customers can do self-service ordering and configuration of VNFs and take advantage of flexible payment models.

La Spisa said that Dynamic Orchestration is also a good stepping stone for 5G and for dealing with Internet of Things (IoT) because it helps operators allocate some of their resources so that not everything is done manually. “Operators have to allocate resources on demand, and to do that, they need to have analytics and policy in place,” she said. Plus, when operators migrate to 5G networks, they will need to offer guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs) to handle some of the use cases.