Mavenir Systems® in the NFV ecosystem: Virtualized VoLTE and RCS functions.
A conversation with Ian Maclean, Head of Strategy, Mavenir Systems
In the first conversation for our upcoming report on the NFV ecosystem, we have talked to Ian Maclean at Mavenir to hear about their approach to virtualization for VoLTE and RCS. All Mavenir products are now hardware-agnostic, software-based and NFV-compatible, and designed operators that want to gradually virtualize their network “one component at a time” – which is what Mavenir envisages to see initially.
And VoLTE and RCS is likely to be one of the first components as IMS is one of the functions that operators are likely to virtualize early, because it is more control-plane heavy than other functions. In addition, operators are only at the beginning of their rollout of IMS-based services. Hence, their IMS implementation is less tied to vertically-integrated legacy solutions. Mavenir’s products can be deployed in ATCA or COTS environments, and the operator can transition from one to the other as it prefers.
“We’ve embraced virtualization as a means to implement IMS core network elements, application servers, in a way that provides operators greater flexibility in terms of how they deploy these products into their networks, faster time to market for the introduction of new services, and greater service agility”, Ian Mclean says.
How is this working out among the operators that have deployed the solution? In this conversation, Ian shares with us what Mavenir and operators are learning in terms of cost savings, performance in a virtualized environments, and the impact of agility on new service rollouts and multitenancy.
This conversation will be included in the Senza Fili report “The emergence of the NFV ecosystem: Laying the foundation for a new way to run mobile networks” that will be published on October 6, 2014. If you would like to receive a complimentary copy of the report, please click here and you will be the first to receive the report when it is finalized.
