Automation is a hallmark of the 5G vision, but often seems far away in terms of achievability. The big vendors are starting to unveil platforms that will take mobile operators at least some way towards automating their network operations. They will still be well short of the ‘self-driving network’, but at least they will taking MNOs to a new generation OSS, better suited to a cloud-based world, and preparing them for the day when advanced orchestration and automation makes the concept of the OSS redundant altogether. The latest comes from Nokia, which has introduced a suite of cloud-native software for 5G environments, promising to “bring programmability into the operations center”, as head of product management Miikka Karhuluoma put it. The…