Network Communications News (NCN) April 2017 | Page 10

TALKING POINT
VNF Exchange: Accelerating
network transformation
Manish Singh, vice president for SDN and NFV product management at Tech Mahindra,
explores VNF Exchange, a global industry platform designed to pre-certify.
A
s co mmun ic at io ns
s er vice prov id e r s
(CSPs) a nd net wo r k
o perato rs l o o ke d fo r
wa ys to cu t co s t s
and accelerate the roll o u t of
new profita bl e s er vices to b et te r
monet i se their n etwo rks , net wo r k
fu nct i ons vir tua lis atio n (N F V )
was bo rn .
To profitably meet the growing
demands on their networks,
service providers across the globe
are launching strategic network
transformation initiatives including
AT&T’s Domain 2.0, Telefonica’s
UNICA and Telstra’s Network
2020, to name a few. A recent IDC
study revealed that organisations
worldwide are expected to
triple the adoption of modern,
automated networks over the next
two years.
The majority of service
providers that are now
transforming their network
infrastructure are moving away
from costly and complex hardware
based network appliances.
Historically, CSPs would turn to
traditional OEMs/NEPs to procure
equipment for specific network
functions – gateways, controllers,
routers, firewalls – and host it
within big racks of equipment in
their central office. However, with
NFV, service providers can adopt a
cloud model and do away with this
appliance-centric infrastructure.
Instead with NFV, CSPs can
build virtualised infrastructure
with commodity switches and
servers, leveraging merchant
silicon and open source, and
orchestrating variety network
functions as virtual workloads,
aka VNF, on their private cloud
10 | April 2017
‘VNF
Exchange is
ideally suited
for CSPs who
are looking
to reap the
benefits of
SDN and NFV,
along with an
accelerated
time-to-
market for
new services.’
infrastructure. Such network
transformation paves the way for
CSPs to realise unprecedented
cost savings and service agility.
The beauty of virtualised
network functions is that they can
be easily installed and provisioned,
allowing organisations to deploy
services when and where they
are needed. As such, they are
conducive to enabling CSPs to trial
new services without incurring
much risk. Not to mention, the
ability to run virtual services on
top of physical underlay network
means that organisations are
no longer forced to rely on the
specialised hardware to run
network functions.
However, this transformation
is easier said than done. The
challenge in transitioning to VNF
is that, previously, all network
appliances were pre-integrated,
pre-certified and had their own
service level agreements in
place. In moving to a virtualised
environment, someone must
now take on the responsibility
for overseeing integration,
performance characterisation,
elasticity and reliability.
Service graphs need to be
designed for stringing number
of VNFs to create end-to-end
services – voice, video, data,
messaging and enterprise
services, for example – requiring
integration, service testing
and validation. Once all this is
done, the VNFs then have to
be onboarded onto the carrier
infrastructure. This requires
onboarding templates, developing
policy rules, capacity planning
guides, deployment of best
practices and more.
This is where VNF Exchange
comes in.
VNF Exchange is a global
industry platform designed to
pre-certify: end-to-end solutions
comprising multiple VNFs, VNF
design and performance. VNF
Exchange is ideally suited for
CSPs who are looking to reap the
benefits of SDN and NFV, along
with an accelerated time-to-
market for new services.
Accelerating NFV
G i ve n t h e co m p e l l i n g b e n ef i t s
of N F V, t h e m a r ket p l a c e i s
h u m m i n g . N ew o p e n s o u rc e
i n i t i at i ve s a re b e i n g l a u n c h e d
– O N A P b e i n g t h e l ate s t o n e ,
fo c u s i n g o n n et wo r k a u to m at i o n .
O p e n s o u rc e p ro j e ct s l i ke CO R D
a re d eve l o p i n g n ew b l u e p r i nt s
fo r c e nt ra l of f i c e s b y co m b i n i n g
t h e p r i n c i p l e s of d i s a g g re gat i o n ,
v i r t u a l i s at i o n a n d o p e n
i n n ovat i o n fo r n et wo r k f u n ct i o n s .
Innovators and disruptors are
introducing new, better designed
cloud native VNFs. Numerous
infrastructure projects are driving
innovation including FD.io for
accelerating data plane workloads
and OCP recently specifying open
telco rack.
However, all this innovation
and all this disruption needs to be
brought together to realise end-to-
end services that CSPs can offer
to consumers and enterprises.
VNF Exchange is geared to do just
that by bringing best of breed
open source solutions and the
NFV vendor ecosystem together
to realise end-to-end solutions;
fully integrated, verified and
performance characterised.