Future of NWDAF

The future of NWDAF is not very clear.  The most influential pros and cons to NWDAF are shown here:

• NWDAF aims to solve a single issue in the deployment of automated, hybrid and 5G networks – the provision of high-performance data/analytics to allow “fast” control loop for automation
• Market commentators discuss the possibility that its capabilities are not as important as those delivered by other members of the DAF family
• The current example is that SLA management for network slices is not as important as the automation of slice orchestration provided by MDAF
• Its adoption is therefore predicated on the successful sale of slices and other new low-latency services by telcos. Alongside, the building up of a pipeline of other automations which would benefit from the faster control loop
• In addition, as with all standards, there are limitation around not being able to standardize everything and deviations will be seen for commercial and practical reasons
• These will undermine the cost and time savings which both the vendor and the telco should benefit from and will be compounded if short-term “fixes” (created to circumnavigate early problems of non-compliance etc) become too expensive/time consuming to remedy in the longer term and create new siloes