Support continues to roll in for the mobile telecommunications industry’s move toward virtualization, with the latest coming from Radisys. The company said it will begin offering support for Intel’s fourth-generation Core processor technology across its x86 product portfolio to meet growing processor demands from software-defined networking and network function virtualization applications.
Radisys claims that its offering is designed to support increasingly bandwidth-intensive mobile applications and mobile operators’ needs for carrier-grade SDN and NFV deployments with a platform “that can process hundreds of millions of data plane flows simultaneously, across thousands of virtualized network functions.”
“Radisys has invested in upgrading to Intel’s next generation silicon to address these issues and to help mobile operators reduce costs, while accelerating time to market for VNF application developers,” the company explained.
The move to provide processing support for virtualized services comes as wireless carriers look to increase their ability to support over-the-top services, preferably ones that the carrier itself is deploying. These include the recent launch of voice over LTE services that are being rolled out to both compete with OTT voice options like Skype and FaceTime, as well as to allow wireless carriers to increase efficiency of traffic across their networks by running voice services over data channels.
IDC recently noted that the move toward virtualization was “set to revolutionize the telecom industry as it transforms the culture and operational infrastructure, as well as the fabric of legacy proprietary infrastructures that have, until now, dominated the space.”
“Despite budget concerns and questions about the ability to execute on the network virtualization vision, [communication service providers], telecom vendors and partners are all embracing potential opportunities,” explained Elisabeth Rainge, research VP for Communications Service Provider Operations at IDC. “Network virtualization for telecom represents some significant challenges, but the upside is extremely high. And, while not everyone will reap the benefits of this profound sea change (e.g., entrenched telecom equipment manufacturers), IDC sees an evolution of infrastructure that is already underway.”
The firm explained that industry moves toward such technologies as VoLTE will “catalyze” the push toward NFV and SDN, however network quality issues related to such virtualization remain to be tackled.
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