AT&T SDN and NFV deployment continues with focus and support as it looks to reach 75% control by 2020
AT&T is often referenced as the gold standard among domestic carriers as well as one of the global leaders in terms of its dedication towards virtualization. AT&T in late 2014 announced plans to control 75% of its network resources using virtualization technologies by 2020, and that at the end of 2015 the carrier had reached 5.7% control, which was ahead of its 5% target.
John Donovan, SEVP for AT&T Technology and Operations, earlier this year said the company’s deployment of its AT&T Integrated Cloud nodes hit 74 nodes at the end of last year, ahead of its target of 69 nodes deployed. These include international deployments, which Donovan said allow for better alignment with local regulations and improve security.
Margaret Chiosi, distinguished network architect at AT&T Labs, provided insight into the telecom operator’s ongoing push in using software-defined networking, network functions virtualization and cloud technologies to power its network. In the first part of this two-part interview, Chiosi touched on current deployments, challenges in making those initial deployments and support from the vendor community.
RCR Wireless News: What commercial operations or services have AT&T so far migrated to being controlled by software using SDN and NFV as part of its plans for 75% control by 2020?
Margaret Chiosi: Two of our first commercial SDN solutions, NetBond and the Network on Demand platform, are “franchise changers” for us. From a customer adoption standpoint, Network on Demand is the fastest growing thing we’ve seen – we introduced the platform in mid-2014 and now have more than 500 business customers using it. Also, we already have 14 million wireless customers on our virtualized network, almost certainly the largest implementation in the world. We’ll migrate millions more this year.
We are looking at our whole network for sweet spots for virtualization. Control plane functions like DNS, DHCP; mobility; parts of our IP core; natural areas like [voice over LTE], [virtual IP multimedia subsystem] as well as our managed services. We’ve also been public about using our software-base architecture for connected car.
RCRWN: What challenges did AT&T see in making those initial migrations?
Chiosi: Getting the performance on a virtualized shared platform versus the monolithic physical platform supporting a wide variety of network functions. Also, instantiation and lifecycle of the platform as well as the virtual functions.
RCRWN: How supportive have AT&T vendors through the Domain 2.0 program been in helping the migration process?
Chiosi: The Domain 2.0 vendors have been supportive. They have more visibility into our roadmap for this next-gen network and we also engage in more collaborative discussions because of the “take risks and fall forward quickly” environment we’re working in.
RCRWN: Some vendors I have spoken with have noted a sense that telecom operators are becoming frustrated at the lack of commercial ready products in support of SDN and NFV migrations? What’s AT&T’s feelings towards any level of frustration about the pace of development?
Chiosi: We’d like the pace of getting the appropriate performance in the data plane on a COTS environment to move faster. AT&T realized the industry did not have a common or even open approach for instantiation and life cycle of the virtualized shared platform as well as the virtual applications. That is why we created, designed and are now developing and deploying our own [enhanced control, orchestration, management and policy project]. We’re moving our network functionality into software, with a push to interoperability and standards.
RCRWN: What hurdles do you see remaining at this point in terms of further migration of operations/services to software control?
Chiosi: The previous challenges would apply here as well. However, the addition of an open source ecosystem to solve these challenges would help tremendously. This is why we joined OPNFV. We see this as a forum to pull the industry together with the different open and vendor-specific components to overcome the challenges previously mentioned. But, the difficulty with OPNFV is that implementation becomes real and exposes the struggles enterprise and service providers are facing. If we could get the whole networking industry to work together through OPNFV to create and execute the use cases we are working on in our silos, the industry would advance quicker.
AT&T is very committed to contributing software created within AT&T back into open source ecosystem. We see this as a way to accelerate the industry in the direction we need to create an SDN-enabled cloud.
Check back for part two of the interview, with Chiosi discussing challenges in dealing with standards, the greater role of telecom operators in the virtualization environment and how extensive she sees virtualization technology migrating through carrier operations.
For more information on the current move towards NFV, SDN and cloud deployments across the telecom space, check out the latest RCR Wireless News feature report “NFV, SDN and cloud: How deep and where?”
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter
