Despite bullish spend predictions for telecom operators into NFV and SDN, service assurance hurdles remain
Network service assurance remains a top priority for telecom operators, though views on what those assurance levels need to be in a virtualized environment remain in flux. Wireless carriers are likely to avoid virtualizing aspects of their network and services – like voice-over-LTE and voice over Wi-Fi services expected to match performance of legacy systems – if they are not confident their virtualized versions are up to snuff.
A recent report from IHS Markit predicts the service provider network functions virtualization market, including hardware, software and services, will surge from $2.7 billion in 2015, to $15.5 billion by 2020. The prediction noted NFV software would comprise 80% of the $15.5 billion total, “or around $4 out of every $5 spent on NFV.”
In addition, the firm claims 11% of NFV revenue would come from new software and services; 16% from NFV infrastructure, which includes servers, storage and switches purchased in place of purpose-built network hardware; and 73% from existing marketing segments, primarily from virtual network functions.
A more bold, and perhaps more encompassing, report came from Technology Business Research, which predicts the NFV and software-defined networking markets are expected to hit $158 billion by 2021, boosted by early adopters such as AT&T beginning to ramp investments into the NFV and SDN ecosystems.
A recent survey released by the Linux Foundation’s Open Platform for NFV Project, found an increasingly small percentage of telecom operators have not yet planned for network functions virtualization. The survey, which was conducted for OPNFV by Heavy Reading and released at the recent OPNFV Summit, noted 6% of the more than 90 telecom operators questioned did not have an NFV strategy planned at all, down from 14% last September.
However, these investment and deployment predictions can be stymied if operators are unable to tackle issues surrounding service assurance.
“Without sufficient NFV validation the significant investment being made by operators will be at risk and the evolution to virtualized network functions will not deliver the quality of service available from existing hardware-centric networks,” said Ultan Kelly, product director at Cobham Wireless.
Obviously, expectations are high in terms of the telecom and mobile telecom space moving into the software-centric world using NFV and SDN technology. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t significant challenges still needing to be tackled, with service assurance seen as one of those hurdles.
“Nobody really has the same approach at this point,” explained Bala Thekkedath, director of NFV marketing at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. “Some are leading and others are following.”
For more on this topic, check out the RCR Wireless News feature report “Service assurance in a NFV and SDN world: Assuring the virtualized networks of the future” at RCRWireless.com.
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