INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Mobile Technology
Service orchestration and
network virtualisation
Ravi Mali, a director at Ciena
ranging use of SDN and NFV to virtually
‘slice’ the network to provide appropriate
service performance for various new high-
bandwidth services, not least the region’s
growing smart city applications.
5G will soon become standardised and we
believe it will be the hottest topic in the
regional telecoms industry for years to come.
Bandwidth demand will continue
to surge
Demand for bandwidth availability is
exploding rapidly across the globe. Both
network operators and Internet content
providers are seeking cost reductions as their
customers demand more bandwidth, at
higher densities and at lower costs.
According to a report by ACG research, peak
period bandwidth requirements continue
to grow at 52% CAGR, making operator
management of bandwidth a continued
focus. Operators will still be responsible for
ensuring that the network can support the
amount of data traversing the network
as use of advanced applications by users
continuously increases.
We will continue to see the development
of new technologies that get us closer to
virtualised, demand-driven networks with the
potential to reshape whole industries from
anywhere on the planet.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
In 2018, we will see an
acceleration of service provider
networks reducing dependency
on hardware as they take
advantage of open APIs and
agile programming tools to
deliver new services faster.
There is huge pressure on the
CTOs of various Integrated
Operators to reduce OpEx
and introduce automation
and service orchestration in
their networks. Since most
CTOs control a large part of
the CaPeX budget, there is a
huge opportunity for CTOs
to focus on investing in open
multivendor automation and
service automation software
within their network domains and transform
their OpEx budgets that is being challenged
by the board.
In the Middle East, most operators have
kicked off automation programmes and are
incentivising their design teams to focus in
this direction. We predict that the top tier-1
operators in the Middle East will implement
various automation and service automation
projects over the next few years to simplify
multivendor service provisioning and be able
to provide the CIO and IT departments with
a flexible network domain to help roll out
cloud based dynamic NFV services.
We also expect that collaboration between
the CIO and CTO within the operations will
improve but will not merge in the short-
term. They will continue to operate as two
separate departments but with virtual
teams spanning both domains for specific
automation projects.
One of the reasons is that implementing
virtualised services with VNFs has been really
challenging for the CTOs and the desired
operational KPIs have not been achieved.
Integrating virtualised services with present
OSS/BSS systems has complicated and most
CTOs have now realised that they need
to first automate their network services
and only then stitch it to virtual services to
experience the full benefit of virtualisation
and automation.
We expect providers to continue to face
challenges with the deployments of virtual
network functionality (VNF). Currently, there
is a lack of commercial incentive among
technology vendors to collaborate on
VNFs because of the extensive operational
challenges of deployment, including
everything from operations, administration,
maintenance (OAM), ownership of failure
modes, and managing unique software
licensing solutions per vendor.
Yet a cohesive infrastructure is required
to deliver solutions to the service provider
industry. If the industry wants to get serious
about virtualisation, then collaboration and
standards (de facto or otherwise) will have
to be developed that take into account
practical deployment challenges.
A need for a demand-driven
infrastructure to support 5G and
the Internet of Things (IoT)
In 2018, a new driver will emerge in multi-
layer integration: virtual network functionality
integrated with transport layer agility.
Providers will need to adopt a demand-
driven network where bandwidth is supplied
based on real-time customer requirement,
rather than on a planned view of what
should be required. We expect a demand-
driven infrastructure will be a requirement
to support high bandwidth consumer
applications like 5G as well as massively
distributed IoT networks.
The proliferation of more advanced
applications in increasing use by customers
in 2018 will require network operators
to infuse even more intelligence into
the network to support the new levels of
demand; never before seen in previous years.
Developing increasingly intelligent networks,
deploying advanced software solutions and
the quest to accomplish this at a fair price
will be the name of the game for network
operators in 2018.
The region has a shared economic vision
based on these key enabling technologies
and so the broad adoption and successful
application of these building blocks will play
a vital role in transformation and success in
2018 and beyond. n
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