Vendor says it's moving towards a full-blown NFV architecture, starting with distributed SBC trials in the third quarter.

Sarah Thomas, Director, Women in Comms

June 9, 2014

3 Min Read
Genband Starts NFV Push With Distributed SBC

ORLANDO, Fla. – Genband Perspectives -- Genband has been relatively quiet about its plans for NFV, but that is set to change this week at its annual Perspectives show, where the networking vendor will highlight plans for a "full-blown NFV architecture" starting with a distributed SBC.

In its most recent show last fall, a dominant theme was Genband's move to virtualization, but CMO Brad Bush recognizes that there is a big difference between being "virtual" and hardware independent and actually supporting NFV. Right now, all of Genband's software can run on non-proprietary hardware, but its first step on the path to a full NFV trial system will start with a distributed session border controller (SBC). (See Genband Goes Virtual at (Actual) Show.)

In this model, signaling would happen at the edge of the network, while media is handled by a much larger server at the core. "We can take and build a big box to handle media," Bush says. "We can make smaller virtualized boxes at the edge, so you get best of both worlds."

Bush says its distributed SBC is in technical trials now and will begin full trials in the third quarter. In the meantime, it will continue to work on aligning its products with NFV's core tenants of elasticity and orchestration, adds Sanjay Bhatia, Genband's senior director of product marketing. He says Genband will remain agnostic and work on multiple cloud environments, including OpenStack.

"Telecom is five to 10 years behind IT industry in virtualization," Bush adds. "In NFV as an architecture, it's different. I think with SDN and NFV combined where you can take care of the transport side and application side, you'll start to see more virtualization at a more rapid pace."

WebRTC & IP in focus
Outside of NFV, the other big focus of the show will be WebRTC, which Bush claims Genband is six months ahead of the competition with its SpiDR gateway currently in several customer deployments. WebRTC, he says, is the catalyst for communications being more ubiquitous, device independent, and embeddable in apps. Perspectives will also tackle the important topic of how to make money with WebRTC in different verticals, an issue that has held a lot of wireless operators back. (See Genband Builds a Gateway to WebRTC, WebRTC in the Wild, and What WebRTC Means for Telcos.)

And, finally, Genband will continue to play up one of its most important themes: network transformation. The vendor is launching a new campaign to help operators migrate from TDM to IP, including new ways to finance the transformation through green energy credits. Bush sees the IP transformation picking up steam with the FCC's rural broadband transition initiative, and Genband is busy talking to its big customers about how to make the move themselves. (See Bolder Is Better for IP Transformation and Genband Plots Funding of TDM Death March.)

"They're excited about wrapping up green energy savings with finance, power, and heating changes to their network, and the good thing is when you transform, you get all the other things like IP communications that comes with it," he says.

Light Reading is in hot and sunny Orlando for the show, so check back for more updates on NFV, WebRTC, and pictures of whatever other Cheap Tricks Genband has in store this week.

— Sarah Reedy, Senior Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Sarah Thomas

Director, Women in Comms

Sarah Thomas's love affair with communications began in 2003 when she bought her first cellphone, a pink RAZR, which she duly "bedazzled" with the help of superglue and her dad.

She joined the editorial staff at Light Reading in 2010 and has been covering mobile technologies ever since. Sarah got her start covering telecom in 2007 at Telephony, later Connected Planet, may it rest in peace. Her non-telecom work experience includes a brief foray into public relations at Fleishman-Hillard (her cussin' upset the clients) and a hodge-podge of internships, including spells at Ingram's (Kansas City's business magazine), American Spa magazine (where she was Chief Hot-Tub Correspondent), and the tweens' quiz bible, QuizFest, in NYC.

As Editorial Operations Director, a role she took on in January 2015, Sarah is responsible for the day-to-day management of the non-news content elements on Light Reading.

Sarah received her Bachelor's in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She lives in Chicago with her 3DTV, her iPad and a drawer full of smartphone cords.

Away from the world of telecom journalism, Sarah likes to dabble in monster truck racing, becoming part of Team Bigfoot in 2009.

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