Continuing developments in network functions virtualisation are encouraging mobile network operators to look hard at the technology as a means of cutting their hardware investments. NFV is not just a technological challenge for network operators though, it is impacting on vendors anxious to show their skills, as Jeremy Cowan finds.
In June Ericsson landed a deal with Australian telecommunications provider, Telstra. Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) is to supply it with optical transport equipment and services. The agreement includes the supply of Ericsson optical transport equipment and services as well as Ciena packet-optical platforms. This agreement also supports the introduction of software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) functionality, designed to deliver flexible and scalable control networks.
David Robertson, director of Transport and Routing, Engineering at Telstra said: “The continued improvement of Telstra’s optical technology will increase bandwidth capacity and also lower latency which is of growing importance as more and more operations move to the cloud.”
Tr
aditionally known as a hardware vendor, Ericsson was reorganised in July into two business units with a growing concentration on its software portfolio. The new business unit Cloud & IP aims to capture opportunities with virtualisation for the IP and core portfolio based on number one position in telecom core networks (see: Ericsson appoints new business unit heads).
At the Big Telecom Event in Chicago in June, global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, Huawei showcased new solutions and commercial deployments of network functions virtualisation with ICT industry partners, designed to demonstrate the company’s NFV capabilities.
“NFV is an important cornerstone and plays a vital role on Huawei’s SoftCOM strategy, the company’s future-oriented open telecom network architecture,” said Mr. Libin Dai, director of Integrated Solutions for Huawei’s Carrier Business Group. “Successful deployment of NFV can drastically shorten the technological innovation cycle for telecom operators, expedite new service launches, reduce operation and maintenance costs, and realise traffic monetisation. We believe this will pave the way towards a new era of ICT integration. Through collaboration with major carriers, telecom vendors, IT vendors, and over-the-top (OTT) players, Huawei strives to drive NFV development and establish SoftCOM as a fully open network architecture which allows for complete vertical decoupling and horizontal open integration, while also supporting all third-party hardware, operating systems, and applications.”
Open standards
As we reported here on September 4 (Nokia Networks claims a first as it brings carrier-grade telco cloud to mobile broadband network), Nokia has announced that its first virtualised network function will be a cloud-based version of voice over LTE (VoLTE). Nokia Networks is reportedly delivering the first commercial Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) solution bringing cloud technology to services such as Voice over LTE (VoLTE). The sale to an unnamed operator is running VoLTE on a cloud platform, and is designed to enable the operator to scale and cope cost-effectively with varying traffic by automating the necessary mobile network functions.
Nokia is claiming to be ETSI-standards compliant, meaning it complies with those draft standards so far issued by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute for industry discussion. ETSI released nine draft NFV documents following the 7th meeting of its Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Industry Specification Group (ISG) which ended in Santa Clara, California on August 1. A new leadership team was also elected and plans laid down for NFV’s next phase. The draft documents comprise the first release of NFV that will be published at the end of 2014. The ISG NFV made the draft specifications available to the industry at this stage purely to encourage feedback.
Jennifer Clark: Nice move for Nokia
451 Research VP, Jennifer Clark commented: “Virtualise voice and move it into the cloud. Whether VoIP or VoLTE – that’s what service providers are hearing more and more on the solutions side from vendors such as Alianza, Metaswitch, Genband and now, Nokia. This is a nice move for Nokia. First, it’s offering an ETSI-compliant (well, compliant as far as the standards go today) architecture. Second, Nokia has the integration muscle to make this work for service providers (something some of its small-fry competitors do not). And third, the VoLTE solution can actually be managed, i.e., it is deployed with Cloud Network Director functionality. Service providers are not looking for cool products that someone throws over the wall. They need partners to help them integrate the solution and provide the tools to configure, manage and troubleshoot it. Nokia’s ability to provide that is undoubtedly why it has a major operator scheduled to deploy the solution by year end.”
HP works to replace head of NFV poached by troubled Ixia
HP’s NFV guru, Bethany Mayer went to Ixia
Although only appointed in February as senior vice president and general manager of NFV to lead HP‘s charge into this battle, Bethany Mayer has already been lured away to become the CEO of loss-making network testing and optimisation systems vendor Ixia. This leaves HP’s NFV business unit urgently looking for a replacement, paqrticularly as HP was expected to release a new NFV orchestration product.
Fear not, if you felt you were alone in being confused by how to get the best out of network functions virtualisation. Ixia is convinced that the challenges of successful migration to NFV are best explained in its new eBook, Demystifying NFV in Carrier Networks: A Definitive Guide to Successful Migrations. In it Ixia describes its strategies for ensuring successful migration.
Virtualisation marks one of the most profound paradigm shifts the networking industry has faced to date, says Ixia, a change designed to facilitate better, faster change. “While operators agree on the need and vision for NFV and SDN, however, many are struggling to quantify the benefits, understand practical migration steps, and measure success. What NFV is, and what changes it will bring; Virtualisation market dynamics and migration forecasts; Operator deployment challenges; Best practices for validating NFV strategies; and Strategies for monitoring and measuring performance.”
Accelerating adoption of NFV
There was further guidance on NFV earlier this year. In a research note (Pace of NFV uptake accelerates, despite many risks) Caroline Gabriel, research director of Maravedis-Rethink wrote: “Network Functions Virtualisation is spearheading the adoption of broader software defined networking (SDN) technologies by mobile operators. The combination of these two platforms will transform the carriers’ networks, cost bases and service delivery over the coming decade, but this will be a long process, and considerable risks currently remain. Despite the hurdles, though, uptake among MNOs is accelerating, and by 2018, over 72% will have implemented NFV in some elements of their commercial networks.”
“Although an SDN strategy does not have to include NFV, almost 80% of MNOs will include this standard in their broader SDN strategies, often as the starting point,” Gabriel added. “This is because NFV has been conceived, under the auspices of ETSI, specifically for carrier networks, whereas some other SDN technologies have been adapted, even shoehorned, from the enterprise space. There is a strong sense of ownership of NFV in the mobile community, and many feel its benefits will be more immediately realisable than those of SDN.”
Meanwhile, NFV and its sister technology, software-defined networks (SDN) are being extensively trialled. Many view them as a way to reset the cost base of the CSP business but OSS / BSS is a bottleneck. We will come back toi this in a future issue, to see how is this bottleneck is being overcome and to learn whether NFV will mean that network equipment providers’ grip on telecoms software will be loosened as IT-oriented hardware becomes the norm.
NFV processing power, integration and flexibility
The pace of developments in NFV shows no signs of slowing. Fremont, California-based ZNYX Networks®, a provider of high-density platforms for virtualisation and mission-critical environments, last week launched the B1 top-of-rack switch platform for security and NFV with an integrated Intel® Xeon® server-class compute environment. The B1 platform is claimed to deliver twice the density in half the rack space at two-thirds the cost of comparable systems.
“Many of today’s network-edge systems, and command and control platforms, require low cost, high performance technologies in compact form factors,” said David Parkinson, VP of hardware engineering at ZNYX Networks. “The ZNYX B1 top-of-rack switch platform is ideal for NFV applications, network and security appliances, high end routers, and end-of-row or top-of-rack security devices. In a multi-tenant server rack, the B1 is able to deploy services for specific servers in the rack, enable individual service configurations for servers, and isolate services for different departments within an enterprise.”
