Xura is onboard with mobile operators moving to launch NFV platforms, but cautions the moves will take time and steps should be followed for gaining maximum efficiency
When it comes to telecommunications technology, we are constantly surrounded by both slow-to-take and fast-to-market industry trends that make an impact on mobile operators. One specific topic that has grown in popularity is network functions virtualization. The momentum behind NFV has grown rapidly since October 2013, when the first set of specifications was defined. In fact, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute-sponsored NFV specification group has the support of significant industry leaders such as Verizon Communications, AT&T, BT, Orange, Telefonica, Telecom Italia and NTT. But the truth of the matter is NFV still has years of advancing to go.
So what exactly is NFV?
NFV is driven by several dozen large telecom service providers to increase the use of virtualization and commercial servers in their networks. NFV leverages IT technologies, including virtualization, standard servers and open software to fundamentally change the way networks are built and operated.
Another term widely associated with NFV is software-defined networking. SDN provides the separation of the control and data plane where the intelligence of the network (the switch or router, for example) is split from the packet forwarding engine. This separation provides opportunities to program the network at various points to improve the programmability and operations of optical network gear.
Although SDN provides the framework to control the network routing via software, NFV adds additional features for the application level providing a resilient platform for hosting network services like messaging, voice call management, registration, authentication and authorization of the subscribers services. For some operators, their NFV solution is not even using software-based networks initially, but adding this as a roadmap item to provide additional flexibility to the network later.
Following the numerous discussions at the 2016 Mobile World Congress, experts are predicting NFV adoption has the potential to revolutionize mobile operator networks. SDN and NFV can enable resource and service orchestration with dynamic provisioning that can take minutes instead of months.
We know it is growing … but where is it headed?
Even though it’s an evolution, the momentum behind NFV is expected to become a major investment for companies. In fact, recent research by SNS Research predicts the NFV market will reach nearly $21 billion by 2020, and offer capital expense savings of approximately $32 billion for wireline and wireless service providers. For a shorter term prediction, IHS Infonetics predicts NFV hardware, software and services market will grow to $11.6 billion in 2019, with software taking over 80% of this amount.
SDN and NFV will need to coexist with traditional switches, routers and optical equipment that use custom silicon to deliver ultra-high performance throughout. The networks of the future will see hybrid designs of specialized hardware combined with more SDN and NFV elements.
Over the next few years, large service providers will explore and start to implement a range of SDN and NFV technologies on commercial off-the-shelf platforms comprising a wide variety of use cases. Within the next few years, SDN/NFV will be the mainstream option for service providers deploying cloud and network architectures.
A new generation for mobile operators
The shift to NFV is one of the most significant evolutionary events for the telecommunications network operator. But what will its advantages mean for the industry?
The near term benefits are obviously lower capital and lower operational costs, including data center costs; which necessarily form the business case funding the investment. Longer term, the impact will certainly be increased flexibility that will radically transform the operational business of running a telco. NFV will provide the operator with a much greater degree of network elasticity and the agility to adapt to market or consumer behavioral changes simply and quickly. This is especially important because the speed of change in telecommunications seems to be increasing all the time.
Here are a few specific areas where mobile operators will see a positive change upon NFV and SDN deployment:
Agility and flexibility
NFV increases the operator’s business agility and flexibility, allowing mobile operators to quickly launch, configure, migrate and tear down services; all the while minimizing vendor lock in. With all software elements deployed in an NFV environment, mobile operators have the ability to allocate processing power where it is needed and will generate the greatest value.
Lower capital costs
The move to NFV allows the operator to migrate from having a multitude of specialized purpose-built hardware stacks to a pool of unified resources utilizing COTS, which is less expensive and easier to obtain for augmentation or replacement. The hardware can also be shared across multiple applications allowing resources to be applied to applications that might have different busy/high utilization periods.
Lower operational costs
With a unified network running NFV management and orchestration, operational processes are streamlined, automated and simplified with capabilities such as self-healing, capacity scaling and instantiation and configuration of network services.
Parallel deployments
Tenancy NFV allows sharing resources by different applications, accounts and users, serving multiple customer bases and running parallel instances of the same service, i.e. coexistence of different versions, testing and production environments, parallel customizations for similar yet different market segments, etc.
NFV makes network and service provisioning more flexible, which allows operators and service providers to scale services up or down quickly to address changing demands. These services are delivered via software applications on any industry standard server hardware. Rather than buying a hard asset, service providers can simply take the function associated with the asset and instantiate it as a virtual machine on a server.
In addition, network functions will be implemented in software and thus can be easily moved to various locations in the network without having to install new equipment – meaning, operators and service providers in some cases will save in hard assets as applications can share capacity. This will create an inexpensive and scalable deployment for operators even when additional assets are needed since they are cheaper than specialized equipment.
Virtualization eliminates the dependency between a network function and its hardware, allowing operators to have a local or regional presence without needing infrastructure to support that presence. NFV can address key trends confronting operators; however, because the technology is so new there will be pitfalls every operator and service provider needs to keep in mind.
Thinking of deploying NFV? Here’s what to look for
Messaging solutions are expected to be high on the priority list for operators virtualizing network functions. This is because value added services are still a vital part of infrastructure and because the wide range of solutions will provide a wide range of opportunity for NFV simplification. Also, as new messaging solutions are launched by service providers it makes sense to create the new services within the environment they plan to use in the future and migrate the traditional services over to the same platform. Today, third-generation technologies are embracing network evolution enabled through virtualization and recognize not all operators are at the same stage of NFV adoption.
Here are some crucial elements to look for when it comes to deploying virtualization, and what vendor you should work with:
Flexible deployment approach
Look for a company that can support your organization’s transition regardless of where your network is. Whether it be software only, private cloud, cloud based services or software-as-a-service, it’s important for your deployment model to align with the network evolution you’re making. This will decrease complexity and overall costs.
Find a united communication solution
The consolidation of services provides an additional benefit by maximizing the use of common product architecture components and enables another level of network efficiency. It also allows for a smoother migration from the legacy services to the new services through interworking and relocation of the messaging functions to the NFV platform.
Advanced routing capabilities
Due to the evolution of NFV, there will likely be a long period of time where operators leverage existing legacy VAS systems to maximize the initial investment and continue serving customers with minimal interruption; increasing the complexity of the technology. It’s important to look for deployment systems that provide a variety of advanced routing capabilities that can operate within traditional environments and allow the operator to logically and methodically control which scenarios are serviced by what resources and route traffic appropriately.
Keep calm and NFV on
While still evolving, NFV will offer near-term benefits such as lower capex and opex. But the real benefit is going to be increased business agility, including network elasticity, faster service launch and enabling new commercial opportunities. What are some of your predictions on how NFV will impact the industry?
Editor’s Note: In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this Reader Forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but we maintain some editorial control to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: [email protected].
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