CenturyLink's Feger: Don't Forget Automation on the Virtualization Journey

In leading CenturyLink's network virtualization efforts, which includes the development and design of systems architecture to transition to virtual services, James Feger says it's key to not only consider the operational changes that need to occur to support virtualization, but also build in automation along the way.

"The focus should be on building automation into the infrastructure as you're developing it," says Feger, VP of network virtualization for CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL). "One of the goals for us this year is as we roll out our Programmable Services Backbone -- essentially our virtual edge -- we are building tooling, automation and monitoring capabilities into the infrastructure. When we launch, the goal is to deploy a location using the same tools operations will use to maintain and manage these services so we know they work properly when we stand it up."

During his upcoming keynote on the morning of May 16 at Light Reading's fifth annual Big Communications Event, Feger will address the operational changes that telcos must make to further virtualization efforts, and how to incorporate automation to speed historically manual processes. As automation is added, telcos free up more resources, allowing their network and IT teams to tackle the next big problem. Read Feger's full description of his keynote presentation, "Operational Aspects to Virtualization," here.

"The approach is to build automation so your core team of experts can focus on other things that aren't yet automated or are more difficult to automate," he explains. "You take that feedback from them and that's how you build your automation … you need the core knowledge and feedback from people that know how to solve the problem, and provide you with the rule sets and steps for how to solve the problem so you know how to automate."

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading

This is an edited version of a story that was originally published on Telco Transformation's sister site, Light Reading. To see the full story, click here.