The concept of network functions virtualisation (NFV) is well understood but CSPs face a series of decisions and challenges as they move to real world deployments of the technology, writes George Malim
As communications service providers (CSPs) grapple with setting strategies for migration to virtualisation, the challenge is becoming less about the technology and more about what to virtualise first. Those decisions are heavily influenced by the existing state of a CSP and the markets it operates in. They are also assessing organisational impacts and how they will be able to run hybrid environments, composed of both virtualised and physical hardware.
“We really believe the network is always going to be a mixture of physical and virtual equipment,” says Sergio Pellizzari, a solutions architect and a founder of Nakina Systems. “In a lot of cases a CSP wouldn’t virtualise, they’ll only do so where it makes sense.”
For some, it’s simply not that difficult. “Virtualisation isn’t really a challenge,” says Per Borgklint, a senior vice president and the head of Business Unit Support Solutions at Ericsson. “In essence it’s just the first step of moving something into the telco cloud, taking existing software and putting it on a very generic resource base. Services will be rendered from the cloud to a very large extent which means the OSS will transform.”
However, that won’t be a giant leap. “A fairly boring system like inventory management might transform into something more agile and that will follow naturally when networks start to transform,” he adds. “I don’t think OSS will be challenged, there are probably more challenges in regulations and data privacy than there are in the technology itself.”
Tara Van Unen, the senior manager for strategic marketing at JDSU, agrees: “When it comes to accelerating virtualisation, it’s not so much the technology that’s complex, it’s everything around it,” she says. “We’re looking to virtualise systems across the whole portfolio and are working with TM Forum’s Frameworx model to assess the maturity of virtualisation components.”
It is still early days. “If it’s a five stage plan, we’re at stage one as an industry,” Van Unen confirms, pointing out that the appetite for virtualisation among CSPs is firmly established. “Every single customer engagement we have for assurance includes a mandatory requirement to show how this will operate in a virtualised environment. No investments are being made without being virtualisation-ready.”
David Heaps, the senior vice president of strategy at CSG International shares Borgklint’s view that virtualisation has a limited impact on OSS and BSS. “We’re a step removed from NFV apart from in realtime charging and policy,” he says. “Virtualisation is still run from the IT domain and we have systems that can run in virtualised environments so we don’t see a lot of change from our point of view. If network elements become virtualised, we’ll still collect data.”
CSPs are starting to move beyond proofs of concept, although those still form the bulk of virtualisation activity. Early projects centre on virtualised customer premise equipment (vCPE) and virtualised voice over LTE (vVoLTE). CSPs have targeted vCPE in the enterprise arena because it allows them to deploy virtualised equipment in a relatively controlled way, in a small part of their business. The less risk averse CSPs are looking to vVoLTE because they have to make investments to support VoLTE anyway and consider that as they are doing so, they should try to drive synergies and cost efficiencies by deploying it in a virtualised way.
There’s an evidently higher risk involved in deploying virtualisation so early for a service that is so core to a CSP’s business. “I’m not so sure about virtualised VoLTE,” says Justin Paul, the head of OSS marketing at Amdocs. “Part of the reason for that is that it’s so close to the core business that generates revenue today.”
“I suspect you are going to see a lot of focus around an area where CSPs have problems generating enough revenue today and that’s enterprise,” he adds. “If you get it right, it’s all upside and if you get it wrong you haven’t lost much. If you get virtualisation in VoLTE wrong, you have the potential to damage your current revenue.”
For Martin Morgan, the director of marketing at Openet, vVoLTE is certainly a topic for discussion and exploration among CSPs. “The definite feeling is that VoLTE is something that fits nicely with virtualisation,” he says. “There’s an opportunity to take something that is easily adjuncted and if a CSP has the vision to see NFV as a means to take itself to VoLTE, it could be a beautiful path.”
To a degree, it’s about timing. The emergence of NFV is happening at the same time as CSPs are looking to set up VoLTE. “NFV and VoLTE have been under discussion for several years,” says Mark Windle, the head of marketing at OpenCloud. “The industry as a whole has progressed on the NFV side and the reality is coming into play. The timing coincides with CSPs seriously deciding now that they’re going to implement VoLTE.”
OpenCloud has worked with Telekom Austria Group’s Serbian mobile operator Vip mobile to demonstrate the readiness of vVoLTE. “This showed it can be done in a live environment and that has been a useful proof of concept for the industry,” says Windle. “We built on that by producing a demo at Mobile World Congress that showed the reality of what a deployment of VoLTE in the cloud is really like. We showed it can be deployed on a bare bones cloud server and made ready to deploy in seven minutes.”
“That’s a great demonstration of the power of virtualisation,” concludes Windle. “It transforms how we need to think about deploying services. That is a significant change that will see CSPs shift how they view their own industry and also change their business processes to capitalise on virtualisation.”
