A new NFV study from ACG Research shows investment payback in 3 years
One of the bigger hurdles facing mobile operators as they look at deploying virtualized network functions is lining up capital and operational expense models with expectations.
A new report from ACG Research, sponsored by Affirmed Networks and VMware, looks to tackle that obstacle with a total cost of ownership model claimed to provide a detailed business case outlining the benefits of network functions virtualization for mobile operators.
The survey found mobile operators would begin saving money on NFV deployments within the first year and realize an investment payback within three years; adopting a virtualized evolved packet core can reduce capex by an average of 68% and opex by 67%; and that the deployment of virtualized network components can happen within six months, compared with an average of 15 months for traditional network hardware, resulting in a quicker time to market and return on investment.
In its analysis, ACG looked at a pair of deployment scenarios, including how a “virtualized infrastructure would compare as part of a large-scale, consumer broadband service offering,” and “the benefits of NFV as part of a machine-to-machine service offering.” The firm noted that while actual results varied depending on scenarios, it found benefits in both models.
“In order to increase both network capacity and performance, and also accelerate service creation, MNOs have the option of staying with traditional architectures or moving to a virtualized approach,” said Ray Mota, president at ACG Research. “While we are seeing that nearly all operators have plans to move toward a virtualized approach, what we saw as a result of this research were the severe negative consequences that delaying that migration can have on their bottom line.”
In terms of performance numbers, Overture recently released the results of a collaborative effort showing robust performance of NFV service chaining. Overture said the testing, which was done in partnership with Brocade, Intel and Spirent, showed “zero packet loss throughput” for a pair of gigabit ports carrying “line-rate IMIX traffic through multiple [virtual network functions] in a pure-play NFV environment.”
The company noted that “pure-play NFV” is considered the running of software VNFs on standards servers with no specialized networking hardware.
“These real-world simulation tests prove that NFV can deliver high performance at the customer premise to support even the most demanding communication service provider environment,” the company noted.
A recent report from IHS found that 35% of telecom operators are planning to deploy network functions virtualization this year, yielding yet more evidence that despite its still nascent nature, carriers are moving rapidly toward NFV and virtualization platforms.
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