Make NFV real. If NFV is to progress, proofs of concept (PoC) and trials need to come out of the lab and into live networks. Managing and orchestrating a single VNF in a siloed PoC is a different matter from managing it as part of a production network. Real experience with NFV MANO will be gained when it is tested in a live environment, and operators have to face and overcome OSS integration and cultural, organizational and process change issues. New services such as VoLTE are likely to be the earliest sources of NFV implementations. Nokia points out that operators don't have to roll out VoLTE as a fully virtualized service from day one. They can start with a relatively simple VNF, such as the telecom application server, to iron out MANO/OSS issues, and then follow with virtualized IMS CSCF, HSS, SBC and EPC functions as the "third way" of network management beds down.

Define and stabilize the NFV infrastructure management domain of the NFV MANO. The virtualized infrastructure management (VIM) and inter-domain resource management (NFV Orchestrator) functionality required for NFV are the least controversial and most fundamental part of the MANO architecture. They are also the best understood, as discussed at the OSS in the Era of SDN & NFV: Evolution vs. Revolution event. There is still work to do in extending operators' favored VIM candidate, OpenStack, with carrier-grade and NFV-specific management features, but a reference implementation from the OPNFV initiative will go a long way toward providing the industry with the stable, standardized cloud management platform it needs. OPNFV continues to attract new supporters to join founding members, including AT&T, HP, Intel, Nokia and RedHat.

Address NFV security in conjunction with the NFV MANO. In a virtualized, software-driven world, security cannot afford to be an afterthought because of the raised potential for cyber-attack -- especially where an entity as critical as the network is concerned. Yet security has largely been absent from MANO conversations, partly because in the physical network, security operations belong to a separate organizational silo. NFV represents a large opportunity to break down the artificial barrier between security and other FCAPS (fault, configuration, accounting, performance, security) management operations, and to introduce stronger and verifiable levels of governance through policy-driven automation. Heavy Reading expects that NFV security issues will rise up the agenda in 2015 as operators start to design and implement the end-to-end management processes that span OSS and the NFV MANO stack.