Streamline multi-tier architectures into a flatter, fabric-based infrastructure, so reducing operational costs associated with real estate, power, cooling, cabling and a host of other factors.

Automate traffic management, improve bandwidth engineering and enable CSPs to tailor the network "on demand" to customer needs. Today, large carriers are unable to offer customers truly flexible data networks, where customers can pay for only the bandwidth they use and automatically burst traffic as applications require.

Building bolder business models with SDN and NFV
SDN with NFV offers a way for CSPs to break out of their established, inflexible business models. CSPs can develop flexible models that are based on tiered services and on elastic services (e.g. security-as-a-service, unified communications-as-a-service, etc.) They can also pay network equipment providers on a per-use basis for network functions as needed, as opposed to capital expenditure tied to under-utilized equipment.

The SDN-driven environment will not only help incumbent providers become more agile and able to adapt to market trends and subscriber demands more effectively, but will open up the market to Tier 2 and Tier 3 players that may not have had the deep pockets needed to develop proprietary hardware. It will allow new carriers to quickly scale and compete, as they won't have to load up on costly central office equipment to get started.

Tier 2 and Tier 3 CSPs will benefit from:

Shorter time to market and lower costs for new services through running production and test and reference facilities on the same infrastructure, and not using commoditized hardware

More choice and less risk as pure software competitors emerge, due to the fact they don't need to invest in hardware anymore

Near real-time resource allocation to ensure network resiliency and protection from failures

Multi-tenancy support allowing carriers to securely share hardware resources

Improved power management; servers can be switched off or go into low power mode during non-peak hours

A competitive advantage against OTT services through easier integration of third-party services

The early bird gets the worm
SDN adoption is still in its infancy. While some carriers have realised early adoption can substantially benefit their organization, others are taking a cautious approach due to the capex required and the negative impact on the company's competitiveness associated with the immature product. Yet as the technology matures, we see most operators turning to SDN to protect their future and benefit from lower cost of operations, new revenue streams and strengthened network services. Failure to plan for SDN now, could put CSPs at risk tomorrow.

— Ravi Kumar Palepu, Head of Telco Solutions, Virtusa Corp.