Sophia Antipolis, 5 October 2023
ETSI is pleased to announce the extension of its Zero touch network and Service Management group (ISG ZSM) for an additional 2 year-period.
Created in December 2017, the group has grown to include nearly 80 participating organizations. ISG ZSM has to date published several works related to intent-driven networks (GR ZSM 011), AI enablers (GS ZSM 012), cross-domain lifecycle management (GS ZSM 008) and closed-loop automation (GS ZSM 009).
In addition to this, new work has progressed in a series of items advancing aspects related to security (GS ZSM 014), CI/CD automation in relation with AI (GR ZSM 013), intent (GR ZSM 011) and closed-loop automation (GR ZSM 009-3). The group has also opened new work items, addressing the combination of intent and closed loops (GS ZSM 016) and the application and enablement of network digital twins (GR ZSM 015).
Five Proofs of Concept (PoCs) have been successfully completed, consolidating the connection of the ISG with innovation activities, and contributing to positioning the ZSM framework as one of the foundations for the architectures being considered for next-generation networks, particularly in the recently initiated activities towards defining 6G.
In the future, the Industry Specification Group ZSM plans to continue working on enhancing technical features and interoperable solutions to enable the automated execution of end-to-end operational processes and tasks. They will consider additional use cases and technology enablers with a relevant potential impact on the group’s foundational goals, such as functional disaggregation, autonomous management, network capability exposure, digital twins, and generative models, with a special focus on sustainability issues and next-generation emerging technologies.
The group will also expand and coordinate the experimentation and showcasing of ZSM solutions with Proofs of Concept and increase the involvement of the research and academic community in the evolution of the ZSM proposals. Finally, the collaboration with other SDOs and open-source communities will continue, with the additional goal of achieving specific agreements to bring ZSM proposals as an integral part of the outcomes of those external bodies.