Optical network management: market trends and imperatives

The AI traffic boom during the model-training phase, combined with the shift towards inference and distributed AI architectures, is increasing operational complexity within optical-transport networks. Operators are now seeking more advanced automation capabilities to keep pace with these developments.

This report provides:

• an overview of the challenges operators face now that AI-driven traffic growth is leading to the need for a new generation of optical-network management and automation software
• an overview of the vendor landscape across network automation software, open-standards conformance and emerging network-as-a-service (NaaS) business models
• analysis of the potential strategies that operators can adopt to keep pace with optical-networking innovation and enable new revenue streams
• recommendations for operators and vendors to successfully implement key strategies.