Hughes Network Systems Adds AIOps to its Managed Services

We are, by most estimates, relatively early in the artificial intelligence life cycle. Most AI-based capabilities tracked by Gartner are five to 10 years away from widespread commercial use. Some might say the same is true of connectivity service provider use of AI to support their own network operations.

But it is coming. Hughes Network Systems, for example, has commercial availability of its artificial intelligence capability for supporting information technology operations (AIOps).

Integrated into the company’s HughesON Managed Network Services, the Hughes AIOps feature is already in use across more than 32,000 managed sites. The technology automatically predicts and preempts—or “self-heals”—undesirable network behavior, preventing service-disrupting symptoms in 70 percent  of cases, HNS says.

Hughes says it s the first managed services provider to deliver a self-healing WAN edge capability to enterprise customers.

source: Gartner 

Of course, AI will have impact in many other ways. At two recent sessions of the PTC Academy, a training course for mid-career telecom professionals, the point was made that artificial intelligence, more automated business processes and competitive pressures on profit margins all would combine to reduce headcount in the industry. That is not a judgment about the morality of the trend, just a prediction of what will happen. 

Nor are such observations in any way denying that new jobs that will almost inevitably be created as the automation, artificial intelligence and “substitute machines for humans” trends unfold. 

Big technology changes have happened before. Much-higher mechanization of agriculture drove most U.S. residents off farms and into urban centers, where those people and their descendants worked in new roles. A shift of value from goods to services likewise has shifted people out of factories and created new jobs elsewhere in the economy, particularly in a wide range of services roles. 

While the shift within the connectivity industry might not be that pronounced, industry headcount has been dipping for some decades, though offset by growth in the mobility segment. In the U.S. market, you can see the slow attrition of fixed network employment since the internet bubble peak and crash. 

The emergence of the mobility business as the industry growth driver was accompanied by job expansion in that segment of the business, stabilizing around 2002 and then falling after 2009. 

source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

To the extent that profit margins continue to be under pressure, and industry revenue growth anemic (less than one percent per year, globally), we should expect more substitution of machine operations for humans.