Network virtualization is on its way.
If nothing else was clear from MWC 2013, it’s that networks are on the road to becoming less hardware and more software. Vendors and mobile operators are setting up for a radical change in how they conceive and build their networks.
Ericsson, Tekelec and Juniper Networks all laid out their vision for where things are going at Mobile World Congress, as well as the first products to enable the move to Software-Defined Networks. Amdocs offered up a wide array of new cloud-based services, and messaging enabler Acision announced the first software-only MMS infrastructure deployment. Operators have proven that they’re behind this effort as well – Verizon and 9 other of the largest telecom carriers in the world have all teamed up on a working group for virtualization standards through ETSI. When you have that many minds in this industry collaborating to figure something out, it’s going to happen.
This is all at very early stages — or as Tekelec CTO Doug Suriano told me, “Software-defined networks are still being defined” — but operators are eager to use cloud technology to try to reduce network costs (with fewer boxes, and bring able to use more standard network equipment), more control and ability to scale services, more easily experiment with new services, and reduce time to market.
The cost savings could be significant, from early indictors. Juniper said that ACG Research found that customers using SDN could cut opex costs by up to 65%, and see up to a 54% reduction in total cost of ownership. With numbers like that, no wonder the market is moving in this direction.
Small cells also gained a lot of momentum at the show, with vendors offering new tools from planning and deployment of small cells, to backhaul as they try to help carriers solve the most pressing problems with small cell deployment: backhaul and interference between and among cells covering the same area. You had Nokia Siemens Networks expanding both its small cell portfolio and Wi-Fi, and heavyweight Cisco came out with a solution for integration of Wi-Fi and 2G/3G/LTE with femtocells. John Chambers, Cisco’s chaiman and CEO, went so far as to say that the industry is “now entering the post-macrocell era.”
The momentum isn’t surprising — we already know that AT&T is investing in 40,000 small cells over the next three years as part of its overall network expansion and upgrade plans, and vendors and integrators want a piece of that as well as other carriers’ investments in Wi-Fi, DAS and small cells to supplement and refine their macrocell coverage.
However, I’m reminded of a conversation I had a few months ago with Stéphane Téral of Infonetics and his prediction that the small cell space won’t have enough room for all of the vendors who want to pay in it.
He said the numbers for small cells look enticing, and they will indeed have huge growth — but as he put it, “there is no ‘El Dorado’ in small cells.”
Perhaps not, but there are still a lot of companies gambling that they can be lucky rather than losing out.
