A new Heavy Reading report examines why NFV, SDN and cloud are so important to CSPs, and explores their impact on data center infrastructure.

Roz Roseboro, Consulting Analyst, Light Reading

April 8, 2016

3 Min Read
Bringing NFV Into the Data Center

Communications service providers (CSPs) are in the process of transforming the infrastructure they use to deliver services. They are looking to both lower their capex and opex and increase revenues. At the same time, they need to operate more nimbly to better compete against over-the-top (OTT) and web-scale players.

Their solution is to deploy network functions virtualization (NFV) in order to shift from dedicated platforms to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware that will support virtualized network functions (VNFs). This approach will allow CSPs to automate many of their processes, including service creation and delivery. Software-defined networking (SDN) is the key to ensuring that the benefits of virtualization are realized, by automating connectivity for VNFs.

Many CSPs are also deploying cloud technologies to enable dynamic resource allocation and pooling, to further optimize their infrastructure utilization and operate more agilely. While not all will offer public cloud services, CSPs expect many VNFs to ultimately be "cloudified," and will also use these platforms to support private cloud and internal IT workloads.

In my new report, "Transforming Data Center Infrastructure for NFV, SDN & Cloud," I explore why NFV, SDN and cloud are so important to CSPs, and the impact each is having on data center infrastructure. The report discusses the architectural considerations CSPs must make, including leveraging open source, whether to use a centralized or distributed architecture, and how to scale virtualized resources. It also highlights the strategies being followed by six leading vendors to support telcos' need for performance, availability and scalability in the NFV infrastructure (NFVi).

Infrastructure that had been designed to support general IT workloads must address new requirements. CSPs are looking to achieve similar levels of performance in a virtualized environment as they have in the physical world. The move to the cloud also creates the need to support multi-tenancy. The infrastructure will need to provide varying levels of latency, throughput and resiliency to support a wide range of applications and workloads. New approaches to networking, including overlays, may be needed to ensure that applications can get the connectivity they require in a flexible and automated manner.

CSPs are considering numerous architectural issues as they transform their data center infrastructure to support these new technologies. Open source has long been used in the IT domain, and is beginning to impact the telecom domain. Many open source projects, including the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV), are working to deliver carrier-grade solutions for telecom environments.

Disaggregation is a hugely disruptive trend with the potential to dramatically change data center architectures and the supplier landscape. The decision of whether to deploy a distributed or centralized architecture will depend mostly on the nature of the workload. Scale up or scale out is another important consideration that needs to be addressed, and will also depend on individual workload requirements.

While most telco hardware and software suppliers are participating in ecosystems to deliver an NFVi, a select few are offering an end-to-end, turnkey solution themselves. Traditional IT vendors tend to offer a broad portfolio of products to support different use cases, while newer entrants offer single solutions that can support multiple configurations. CSPs want to avoid vendor lock-in and choose elements from different vendors, but are also concerned about the integration challenge. Larger CSPs are likely to take a best-of-breed approach, while smaller ones will gravitate toward integrated solutions.

— Roz Roseboro, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading

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About the Author(s)

Roz Roseboro

Consulting Analyst, Light Reading

Roz Roseboro has more than 20 years' experience in market research, marketing and product management. Her research focuses on how innovation and change are impacting the compute, network and storage infrastructure domains within the data centers of telecom operators. She monitors trends such as how open source is impacting the development process for telecom, and how telco data centers are transforming to support SDN, NFV and cloud. Roz joined Heavy Reading following eight years at OSS Observer and Analysys Mason, where she most recently managed its Middle East and Africa regional program, and prior to that, its Infrastructure Solutions and Communications Service Provider programs. She spent five years at RHK, where she ran the Switching and Routing and Business Communication Services programs. Prior to becoming an analyst, she worked at Motorola on IT product development and radio and mobile phone product management.

Roz holds a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an MBA in marketing, management, and international business from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She is based in Chicago. 

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