Telecom Providers Worldwide Are Flocking to NFV Plus OpenStack
As this year began, we spotted a lot of action from telecom players and the open source community surrounding Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technology. Red Hat and NEC Corporation said that they formed a partnership to develop NFV features in he OpenStack cloud computing platform, with the goal of delivering carrier-grade solutions based on Red Hat's OpenStack build.
Telecom companies have traditionally had a lot of proprietary tools in the middle and at the basis of their technology stacks. NFV is an effort to combat that, and to help the parallel trends of virtualization and cloud computing stay as open as possible. Now, The OpenStack Foundation has released a comprehensive report on the adoption and business cases driving NFV deployment among the world’s leading telecom providers. Titled “OpenStack Foundation Report: Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack,” the report paints a bright future for NFV with close ties to the OpenStack cloud platform.
You can visit www.openstack.org/nfv for soundbytes from the report, highlights and infographics.
According to The OpenStack Foundation:
"NFV is changing the networking landscape by offering telecom providers a way to significantly diminish reliance on expensive, proprietary hardware while at the same time dramatically increasing the speed and agility with which new network services are provisioned for clients when compared with traditional networks that rely on proprietary, purpose-specific networking hardware. Telecom providers are the driving force behind the development of NFV technology, which leverages cloud computing, software and automation for networking infrastructure. NFV promises to expand the portfolio of revenue-producing services and reduce CapEx and OpEx burdens."
The adoption of NFV is considered to be in its early stages, but the NFV market is projected to grow dramatically. Infonetics Research forecasts a fivefold increase in the NFV market, reaching $11.6 billion by 2019. SNS Research estimates a compound annual growth rate of 54 percent between 2015 and 2020. A 2015 Heavy Reading global survey found that nearly 60 percent of telecommunication professionals are actively exploring NFV. Those numbers are nothing to shake a stick at.
Organizations implementing NFV with OpenStack include AT&T, Bloomberg LP, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT Group, SK Telekom and Verizon.
The OpenStack Summit, taking place this April in Austin, Texas, will include a two-day track devoted to telecom/NFV user presentations, workshops, panels and collaborative sessions.
In September of last year, The Linux Foundation announced the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) Project, a group comprised primarily of telecom operators working across open source projects and vendors to implement NFV within their organizations. News has also steadily arrived from Red Hat about its work to drive NFV and telecommunications technology into OpenStack. Huawei and Red Hat have also announced a new global partnership to enable OpenStack-based cloud deployments.