INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Mobile Technology
At a glance…
Etisalat launches its first
virtual telecom function
Following the successful launch of its first NFV telco cloud,
Etisalat has successfully on-boarded its first virtualised telecom
function using Affirmed Networks’ virtualised Evolved Packet
Core (vEPC) solution.
Lost devices alone pose a serious insider threat.
In 2014 thieves stole 2.1 million smartphones in
the United States and another 3.1 smartphones
were lost. The missing devices are often all
someone needs to gain access to a company’s
valuable data and critical business systems.
Remember the mobile workers from earlier? The
HR director’s laptop could have access to the
direct deposit information for the entire company,
and the network administrator most likely has the
credentials to access 70% of the systems in the
company.
Stats are only beginning to trickle in that highlight
the potential threat of the Internet of Things.
Clearly, billions of devices will connect to the
Internet in the coming years, but how will they
impact the enterprise? According to The Internet
of Things 2015 report, the largest adopter of IoT
ecosystems will be businesses, not consumers.
According to Gartner, businesses are projected
to have from 11.2 to 20 billion IoT devices
installed by 2020. As smart meters, IV pumps,
manufacturing robots, farming equipment, and
even conference rooms connect, the network must
get smarter and be able to classify and understand
the behaviour of IoT devices automatically in order
to keep the enterprise safe.
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vEPC is a framework for providing converged voice and
data on a 4G LTE network becoming the foundation of any
mobile service.
Marking another first for the telecom leader, Etisalat made
its first live LTE data and voice calls on the cloud platform in
April this year. The UAE telecom aims to position its vEPC to
rapidly deliver broadband and voice services for both mobile
and fixed users, in addition to providing advanced connected
car and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) services. Etisalat also
plans to leverage the benefits of virtualisation and software
to economically “spin-up” virtual mobile network cores for
Internet of Things (IoT), Wi-Fi calling and Smart City initiatives
in a matter of hours and days—instead of months with
traditional EPC solutions.
Projects, proof of concepts and various trials aimed at the
transformation of the corporation for the cloud era have
started as early as 2013, with the telecom industry’s fostering
and adoption of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and
Software-Defined Networking (SDN)—two of the enabling
technologies behind smart cities, IoT and 5G initiatives.
The vEPC project comes as part of a corporate-wide program
launched in 2016 to ‘cloudify the network,’ dubbed Sahaab—
an Arabic word that translates to ‘cloud’. The program is
focused on deploying the right mix of the hardware-centric
telecom services and software-centric cloud services.
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