The IT industry is moving towards virtualization and software-defined [insert noun here]. IT architects are realize that management and orchestration systems are required to extract the full benefits of the virtualized architectures. The mobile service providers designed network functions virtualization (NFV) as the standard architecture to bring virtualization and cloud-like functionality to their networks.
Telephonica recently joined the ranks of 22 service providers and ISPs in creating an Open Source MANO Community.
Radware is also a member of the Open Source Mano (OSM) project. We believe it is a welcome initiative that will help expedite the adoption of NFV since it tackles some of the biggest barriers.
After all the meetings have finished, the jamon has been eaten, Rioja has been drunk and all the world’s Mobile Carriers have returned from Barcelona, what have we learned? And does it fit with what we expected? As predicted, Mark Zuckerberg chided the industry for focusing too much on IoT connections (who would not open new Facebook accounts), but he also spoke about spending more to connect to people in the developing world (who would open new Facebook accounts).
Big-bandwidth applications are the tools your customers rely on to get things done. They don’t have time to wait through the typical six months of lead time needed for you to roll out new services on your traditional network built with proprietary “big iron” hardware.
The good news is that most carriers have begun the process of testing Network Function Virtualization (NFV) as a way to make network and service provisioning faster, more flexible and ultimately more profitable.
Every year, I go to my doctor for my annual physical. My doctor goes through a standard series of procedures every time. He asks me questions about my diet and my general physical well-being. He puts his cold stethoscope to my chest and listens to my heart and breathing. He checks my blood pressure and heart rate. His lab technician takes samples of blood for tests to collect information related to organs like my liver and pancreas. He may even request tests depending on what he has learned during the exam. Later, my doctor follows up to discuss the results.
On Tuesday June 9th, I presented at Light Reading’s Big Telecom Event and spoke about NFV in the mobile network. The event hosted a few thousand attendees for several hot Chicago days by the Lake and the NFV session was well attended.
NFV is a hot topic in the Carrier industry. According to Heavy Reading, nearly 50% of the Carriers said that they are currently testing NFV solutions in their networks and the other 50% claimed they are in active study on the topic.
Jim Metzler is a Distinguished Research Fellow and Co-Founder of Ashton Metzler & Associates and is a featured guest blogger.
Many people associate NFV exclusively with service providers. That’s understandable because the organizations that are most closely associated with the definition and development of NFV, such as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the TM Forum, focus almost exclusively on service providers. The service provider orientation of these organizations shows up in all of their documents.
Last week I spent a few days in sunny (and crowded) San Jose, California at the NFV World Forum. The theme this year was largely about open environments and interoperability, ushered on by the standardization efforts behind NFV, along with the related topics of carrier-grade service assurance and reliability. I was fortunate to speak about how Radware is actively investing in open environments as the architecture becomes common platforms for commercial implementations. Radware is implementing SDN and NFV in network security and application delivery domains to help service providers achieve radical cost reduction while benefitting from the advantages of cloud-based application services.
Jim Frey is Vice President of Research, Network Management for Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and is a featured guest blogger.
Network functions virtualization (NFV) is one of the best-accepted and most-understood spinoffs of the SDN craze that has taken root over the past few years. The concept is straightforward: take features and capabilities that are typically implemented in the network and repackage them in forms that can be invoked automatically, without requiring the deployment of new hardware.
