Vendor's pre-MWC media blitz includes cloud-ready OSS and BSS, an NFV assessment service and enhancements to its Radio Cloud proposition, including Ethernet-based fronthaul.

February 17, 2015

3 Min Read
Nokia Offers Virtual OSS, VNF Service

Nokia Networks is setting the tone for this year's Mobile World Congress with a series of announcements that highlights the race to provide network infrastructure, Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) systems and professional services that are geared towards mobile network operators' cloud-driven strategies and the shift towards NFV and SDN.

The vendor has already unveiled a joint offering with transport vendor Coriant (which, of course, largely comprises the Nokia optical business sold to Marlin Equity Partners in late 2012) that proposes the extension of SON (self-organizing network) capabilities into mobile backhaul networks using SDN and advanced analytics tools. (See Nokia, Coriant Extend SON to Backhaul and Sycamore + NSN Optical = Coriant.)

Now Nokia Networks has unveiled a range of portfolio enhancements tailored to more virtualized mobile network operations. Those are:

  • Cloud-ready SPIT: The vendor says it can now offer its entire range of OSS and customer experience management (CEM) tools as software-only, cloud-ready products that can be delivered much more quickly and help reduce IT infrastructure costs. With the SPIT products on offer independent of any hardware platform, Nokia says it can deliver them in days instead of weeks and allow operators to integrate the tools into existing data center platforms, a move that, the vendor claims, can reduce hardware platform requirements by up to 30% (though it's not clear how that number is reached). The "virtual" products can be ordered through Nokia's remote access application catalog. As a result, Nokia's OSS and CEM products are now available as software-only, as a hosted software-as-a-service, or as software delivered on a hardware platform.

    • VNF Verification: Nokia is launching a Cloud Verification Service designed to help operators determine if their existing cloud infrastructure is ready for the deployment of virtual network functions (VNFs). The service uses a "wide range of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to compare an operator's software and hardware against a reference cloud implementation," and includes "more than 1,000 automated test vectors to assess cloud services as well as networking, computing and storage facilities." Nokia believes it can perform a full assessment in five weeks, "90% faster than testing implemented from scratch." That's quite the claim, but the vendor states that statistic is measured against an operator having to design, deploy, measure and analyze more than 1,000 tests itself.

    • Radio Cloud advance: Nokia has unveiled an updated architecture for its Radio Cloud proposition that can utilize processing capacity from multiple sources to power a mobile access network. Key to the latest enhancement is that Nokia has developed fronthaul capabilities that can be based on multiple technologies, including Ethernet (instead of fiber as the only viable option). As part of its Telco Cloud, Nokia is also launching its Nokia Cloud Security Director (for the management of its virtual security services) and announcing the commercial availability of its virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and its Cloud Network Director, designed to manage (orchestrate) virtualized network functions such as the EPC and VoLTE.

      — Ray Le Maistre, Circle me on Google+ Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

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