ETSI’s new Zero touch network and Service Management Industry Specification Group (ZSM ISG) concluded its kick-off meeting with over 40 organizations joining to address the need for automated, end-to-end network management in 5G architectures. The group elected Klaus Martiny of Deutsche Telekom as chair and established a leadership team to focus on five key working topics, including the development of use cases, requirements, and a reference architecture for fully automated service delivery. The initiative aims to leverage technologies like NFV, SDN, and MEC to achieve near 100% automation of operational tasks such as deployment, configuration, and assurance, thereby supporting complex business models like network slicing. Future work will involve close collaboration with other standards bodies and open source communities to produce specifications that will be validated through proofs of concept.
Keywords: zero-touch management, network slicing, NFV, SDN, MEC