The communications industry is beginning to talk about how to implement network function virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN), we noted at the SDN & OpenFlow World Congress 2014. This marks a shift from previous events where the focus was on discussing the nature of the technology.
This year, vendors were demonstrating proof of concept trials and communications service providers (CSPs) were showcasing implementations in their networks. However, it will take years to justify the business case, implement roadmaps, define standards and overcome the operational and organisational challenges involved in deploying these technologies. Simple orchestration, control, and management architecture will help CSPs and vendors to prepare for the digital economy. This article discusses the progress that the telecoms industry is making towards developing new networks, and some of the benefits that this will bring.
The industry needs ‘new thinking’ to realise the benefits of NFV and SDN
The third annual SDN & OpenFlow World Congress 2014 was held in Düsseldorf, Germany, during October 2014 and attracted 1300 players from the communications industry. NFV was in the spotlight at the event, thanks to: the release of ETSI’s Network Functions Virtualisation – White Paper #3; the formation of the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV) – an open source collaboration initiative; and the inauguration of the ETSI Mobile-Edge Computing (MEC) initiative and technical white paper release.
SDN’s progress at the transport and switching layers (Layers 1–3) is clearly advancing thanks to the take-up of cloud computing in the business market.
The move to virtualised next-generation networks (vNGNs) will be as monumental as the shift from analogue to digital. However, three important areas will require significant work during the next 2–3 years:
- establishing sound business cases for NFV and SDN
- planning business and network evolution priorities with revolutionary technology
- managing organisational and process changes.
At the World Congress, in an Analysys Mason-led CSP keynote roundtable panel discussion on managing next-generation networks, Colt Communications, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica called for new thinking to ensure that we overcome existing, past and even future challenges. The following is a summary of the guidance that CSPs would like to pass on to their vendors.
- Stop thinking, and developing solutions, in silos: CSPs expect vendors to develop solutions in the context of the end-to-end bigger challenges and opportunities, and not confine them to the vendors’ own range of technology solutions and areas of strength.
- Change operations: CSPs and vendors need to begin to develop flat development and operations (DevOps) organisations, where the design, development and operations team are equally responsible for the problems and success of operations and delivery (time to market). Organisations will be required to change their structure, corporate culture, staff mindsets and skills, and tools/systems.
- Increase process automation: ETSI’s Industry Specification Group (ISG) for NFV included operations and OSS in its third white paper, further highlighting the emphasis that the industry is placing on NFV implementation and operations. CSPs on the roundtable panel noted that the cost of running a poor and/or complex implementation for at least 10 years may have been a feature of the past, but will be unacceptable in the future. Some CSPs were comfortable to have a proliferation of orchestrators, provided the operational overhead is less than the status quo and they can increase service and operational agility. This requires a level of standards and interoperability that the industry aspires to, but has yet to demonstrate.
- Future-proof vNGN architecture: We will have failed as an industry if we implement NFV and SDN technologies but do not radically improve service agility, operational efficiencies and innovation capabilities. vNGN architecture must be able to meet the challenges and requirements needed for 5G and beyond.
Keep it simple: software complexity is worse than hardware complexity
Orchestration was an important theme at the conference – all vendors were demonstrating their orchestrators, controllers, and related network and service management solutions. So far, the trend is for each vendor to develop an orchestration solution based on the vendor’s technology heritage. This has led to a multitude of NFV and SDN orchestrators/controllers at almost all open system interconnection (OSI) layers, namely Layers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7. However, open source technology was criticised at the conference – vendors noted that OpenStack is immature, which will lead to vendors developing custom OpenStack COTS versions in order to ensure orchestration progress.
The more orchestrators and controllers are enmeshed in a grid of horizontal domains and vertical layers, the greater will be the need to work out the interactions/integration and edges among them, particularly during the long network evolution cycle. Each new significant technology introduced in the communications industry during the past 50 years, including IP, has fallen short of industry goals to revolutionise networking and sufficiently increase agility, efficiency and innovation. Complexity could similarly break NFV/SDN’s promise.
It might be possible to keep vNGN operations simple by limiting orchestration to no more than two automated and well-integrated layers: a service orchestrator that is linked to the OSS, and a virtual network infrastructure (VNI) orchestrator that is linked to the virtual infrastructure manager (VIM) and creates virtual network functions (VNFs) and VNF managers that are monitored by the VIM. These two orchestration layers will interface with each other to translate service logic in to physical and virtual network configurations.
NFV and SDN are enablers to keep CSPs relevant to their customers
CSPs and vendors want to increase their relevance to customers. Using NFV and SDN technology to rethink the way communications networks are built and managed is seen as key to achieving this. CSPs want to be more relevant to their digital customers and protect revenue from over-the-top (OTT) and alternative service providers. Vendors want to increase their relevance to CSPs and CSP competitors by reinventing themselves and being more software-oriented.
It is imperative that CSPs and their vendors combine the best of the IT world (agility, cost-efficiency, a DevOps software- and application- centric approach) and the telecoms world (solid technical standards and operational processes, a customer-centric approach) to strengthen their relevance in the evolving cloud-based, virtual digital economy with different digital consumers and business and delivery models. Deutsche Telecom’s Axel Clauberg noted at the plenary session of the conference that CSPs need reliability at the service level, not the box or functional level, if they want to harness the strengths of IT and telecoms and change the balance of power with OTT providers.
The industry is working out how to move from the challenges of today to the NFV/SDN promise of being not just relevant but important in the digital economy of tomorrow, and the signs are that this work will yield promising results in the next 3–5 years.
Written by: Glen Ragoonanan and Dana Cooperson
