Network Function Virtualization in 2016 – A year of reality

Network Function Virtualization in 2016 – A year of reality

In the year 2015, we have already seen NFV been tested enough in labs and validated at a functional level. However, the actual business case validation will most likely be visible as the 2016 proceeds.

Past few years, we witnessed cloud computing proven successfully by ISVs such as Google and Amazon. Now, the telecom service providers are racing towards acquiring the cloud capabilities. As easy it may sound, the reality is that the cloud services market is highly competitive and majority of operators have little cloud sales and marketing experience. We will witness Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) trying hard to make their presence felt through acquisitions, partnerships, etc. Hence, 2016 will be a “do or die” year for the telecom operators.

NFV is expected to drive the cloud adoption within operators. This adoption is fuelled by the skills (mainly DevOps, NFV/SDN concepts, Virtualization concepts etc) and tools which are leveraged to operationalize NFV. It will directly reduce the cloud opex and improve the service nimbleness of the operators.

Few pointers which will be the growth enablers for NFV in 2016:

1.Focus on operations and management automation:

Last year’s data shows that NFV success has been largely confined to special services with relatively little impact on profits or infrastructure for large operators. None had fully realized their potential, particularly in the critical area of operations and management automation, which is directly proportional to service agility and opex efficiency.

2. Need for a common NFV standard:

The industry has been trying to develop standards for a multivendor NFV management and operations model, but no common standard has emerged so far. In 2016, we’ll either see such a standard develop, or the NFV progress will largely happen through the work of vendors. In either case, vendors will “NFV Magic formula” will continue to emerge.

3.Defining a software defined security approach:

Year 2016 will see two main trends in terms of solving the security concerns. Firstly, security space will likely develop around single-vendor approaches, with a few big players eventually dominating the market. Other trend will be around the emergence of software federations that are driven by APIs. Few other areas that will increased operator focus will be around network visibility, real-time on device analytics designed for NFV platforms.

4.Leverage NFV based Ecosystem partnerships:

The days of “I can build it all” are gone. Instead, ecosystem partnership is required in order to respond to service provider business opportunities and challenges inherent with a shorter time-to-market product delivery cycle. Ecosystem expansion increases service providers' ability to deliver a comprehensive set of carrier-grade virtualized and orchestrated services.

5.Embrace Cultural and Organizational Changes:

IT and Network are two different worlds altogether and when both amalgamate, there is a high possibility for a clash, especially in bigger organizations. More importantly, the operational and planning challenges are not easy to handle coupled with continuous software development, capacity management, resilience management, change, fault/performance management, crisis management and security processes.  Hence, in year 2016, organizations have to introduce more standardized operations and processes in terms of training new skills (P.S. Operators now are building software skills (versus proprietary hardware), architects for both IT and Networks, OSS experts and engineers).

To summarize, NFV has become an important technology to consider especially when the cloud transformation is well underway in most enterprises and telecom service providers. As the telecom industry paces to adopt NFV, the challenges at business, organizational and technical level needs to be tackled carefully. As the NFV comes out from the wraps of PoC towards actual rollouts, we just have to be patient as all the talk starts to translate into actual implementations.

For that, 2016 should be a good year!!