Reference Architecture for a 5G Telecom Network Data Management Platform

[madvimer]

Name

5G Telecom Network Data Management Platform

Organization

Infosys Limited

Team(s)

Infosys 5G network team enabled better Telecom Network Data Management through Kubernetes-Based Network Data Store and leveraged Open Policy Agent (OPA) as the Data Quality and transformation engine for a European Telecom Operator. Goal is to create a unified, robust, and agile platform for managing network data across diverse systems by enforce policy-driven validation and transformation to ensure accurate, high-quality data.

Overview and Goals

Overview
A leading European telecommunications and media company faced significant challenges in managing network data due to fragmented legacy systems, data silos, and inconsistent data formats from multiple vendors. These issues hindered interoperability, data quality, and the adoption of automation and AI-driven initiatives. To address these challenges, Infosys implemented a Kubernetes-based Network Data Store (NDS) integrated with Open Policy Agent (OPA) as a policy-driven validation and transformation engine. This solution established a centralized, scalable, and cloud-native data hub, enabling seamless data sharing, improved governance, and enhanced operational efficiency across the telecom ecosystem.

Goals

Centralized Data Hub: Create a unified, robust, and agile platform for managing network data across diverse systems.
Data Quality & Consistency: Enforce policy-driven validation and transformation to ensure accurate, high-quality data.
Interoperability: Standardize vendor-specific data into industry models (TM Forum, IETF, MEF) for seamless integration.
Operational Efficiency: Improve efficiency by ~30% across network lifecycle stages (Plan, Build, Deploy).
Cost Optimization: Achieve ~50% reduction in data management operational costs.
Enable AI & Automation: Accelerate realization of AI and automation use cases by ~60% through improved data integrity.
Scalability & Agility: Leverage Kubernetes for dynamic scaling, high availability, and rapid onboarding of new use cases.
Compliance & Governance: Ensure consistent enforcement of data policies for auditability and regulatory compliance.

Projects

CNCF Projects - Kubernetes, Open Policy Agent(OPA), Helm, Argo, Grafana
Non CNCF projects - GCP, Terraform, Redis, Kafka, nginx, Spring Cloud Gateway

Planned Evolution

While the reference architecture is now well-defined and stable, the next phase focuses on extending its applicability across multiple cloud environments. Our goal is to implement the same architecture using managed services offered by leading cloud providers such as AWS and Google Cloud, and benchmark their capabilities against existing CNCF components. This approach will help us evaluate trade-offs in scalability, cost optimization, and operational efficiency, ensuring the architecture remains future-ready and cloud-agnostic.

[madvimer]

@castrojo - Request you to take a look

[rochaporto]

cncf/architecture#23

[rochaporto]

@madvimer many thanks for this submission! The TAB will start reviewing and will come back to you with feedback.

[madvimer]

@jrsapi @michael-bowen-sc - any updates on this pls ?