Current Analysis report touts Netcracker as current leader among 9 vendors, with Cisco, HPW and Nokia seen as ‘very strong’ in NFV MANO
The network functions virtualization management and network orchestration space has witnessed significant progress over the past year in terms of serving the “carrier grade” needs of telecom operators, though a definite hierarchy has taken shape in terms of robustness of vendor offerings.
According to a recent report from Current Analysis, Netcracker is seen as the current leader among nine vendors surveyed, with the research firm citing the vendor’s comprehensive platform in “supporting almost every aspect of the carrier journey.” Netcracker was also lauded by the company for its security and licensing sophistication, as well as the “operational wrap and the onboarding of a very high number of third-party [virtual network functions] and their orchestration to VNFM level.”
“Netcracker has also successfully carried these capabilities forward into live MANO deployments at NFVO level including integrations with carrier [operating support systems],” wrote David Snow, principal analyst for IP services infrastructure at Current Analysis. “Nevertheless, while Netcracker’s platform and services offering is very comprehensive, it may be too heavyweight and monolithic for smaller carriers.”
Outside of Netcracker’s leadership position, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Nokia garnered “very strong” rankings from Current Analysis.
Cisco was applauded for security and licensing orchestration “to a degree less evident in most other compared offerings,” but was dinged for not providing more insight into its MANO offering supporting third-party VNFs in live deployment environments.
HPE is said to be unique among vendors in that it does not offer its own VNFs, and instead caters toward multivendor VNF solutions designed to appeal to carriers and VNF vendors. Current Analysis also noted HPE was “very strong” in “deployability” with multiple live NFVO deployments interfacing with third-party carrier OSSs, but was dragged down by concerns over NFV security.
“Whether security is simply one attribute of orchestration or needs more explicit treatment by dedicated MANO functionality remains a debatable issue; nevertheless HPE needs to make its position clearer,” Snow wrote.
Nokia’s recent acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent allowed the vendor to bolster its MANO offering, with the report citing clear NFV MANO intentions from the vendor and support for deployments through its CloudBand ecosystem. On the flip side, Nokia is said to be challenged by live NFVO operation and interfacing to existing carrier OSS.
The next rung of vendors scoring “strong” rankings included Ericsson, Huawei and Oracle, with merely “competitive” rankings bestowed upon Amdocs and ZTE.
“The results of this first solution level assessment of vendor’s offerings show that the competitive landscape clearly portrays the ongoing contest between network and IT vendors to own the NFV MANO space,” the report concludes. “Not only that, but the vendor rankings of players from both domains are also relatively evenly distributed. However, it needs to be remembered that this simply reflects a ‘starting position’ in what will be a long race and there are many factors which will shape the market over the next year, not least the impact of the multiple open source MANO initiatives which have recently emerged.”
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