The telecommunications industry is expected to see rapid movement through the rest of 2014 in terms of software-defined networking and network functions virtualization deployments, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.
The report, based on conversations with telecom operators representing 51% of worldwide telecom capital expenditures, found that 29% of those surveyed are currently deploying SDN and 52% plan to evaluate SDN deployments by the end of the year. The survey also found that 97% of those questioned plan to deploy SDN at some point, with 93% saying they plan on deploying NFV.
Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks at Infonetics Research, explained that demonstrations at the recent Mobile World Congress event showed the progress being made in rolling out SDN and NFV.
“This is the year that SDN and NFV move from the lab to field trials,” Howard said. “Many carriers are in the process of moving from SDN/NFV proof-of-concept projects to working with vendors in the development and ‘productization’ of software that will become the basis for commercial deployments.”
Howard added that in the next few months he expects a few operators to move to actual commercial deployments of specific NFV use cases, but cautioned it won’t be until next year when commercial deployments begin to gain traction.
The survey also found that a majority of respondents will initially target their SDN efforts at MPLS backbone core and could services before moving to multi-layer transport. In addition, using NFV for the delivery of services to business and enterprise customers was the most often cited use case for NFV through 2015. However, back office operating support systems and business support systems were tagged as the biggest barrier for NFV deployments.
As for companies that can take advantage of the virtualization push, Infonetics Research found telecom and data center equipment vendors were “well positioned to take considerable market share in SDN/NFV, with virtually all respondents stating they are likely to buy from the major vendors.”
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