The move towards virtualized and cloud-based network systems can appear significant for telecom operators, but here’s a good place to start the journey
Analysts predict that more than half of all enterprise applications will be in the cloud by 2020. For communications services, the timetable to the cloud is more … cloudy. Building a virtualized communications network is a complex process that involves several unique functions and capabilities, particularly around real-time communications and quality of service. The need to virtualize service provider networks is gaining urgency as the market for hosted cloud services and “5G”-styled applications expands. In order to compete effectively in those markets, service providers must move to a virtualized, cloud-based infrastructure to drive down costs in the face of rising traffic and, more importantly, deploy new revenue-generating services quickly.
By now, most service providers realize the inherent advantages that virtualization and network functions virtualization can offer in terms of capital expense reduction and scalability. Fewer realize that virtualized network functions also serve as a foundation for service orchestration and service automation – technologies that can dramatically accelerate and simplify service creation, and in some cases reduce the time to market for new services from months to minutes. This capability will allow service providers to compete effectively with over-the-top players for a larger share of the mobile app and cloud services market. This prevents service providers from being relegated to the bit-pipe providers of the 5G future.
Virtualization, automation and orchestration
Virtualization means replacing physical network appliances with virtual instances that can be deployed on commercial-off-the-shelf servers. A service provider network is significantly different than an enterprise data center, with specific network elements to support real-time communications such as session border controllers and IP multimedia subsystem gateways. Virtualizing these elements is more complex than simply loading generic software onto an Intel-based server and virtualization alone does not make an application optimized for the cloud.
Service automation is the ability to automatically provision services on network elements. In the legacy network architecture, service provisioning is a manual and time-consuming process that requires each appliance to be individually configured for each new service and service update. For this reason, rolling out a new service that involves tens or hundreds of different elements can take months of configuring and testing before it’s ready for production. In a virtual, cloud-based environment, service providers only need to provision the master configuration and then replicate it across virtual instances. What took weeks now takes less than an hour.
Service orchestration provides coordinated management and control of network services across multiple network domains that are responsible for connectivity. Once you automate a single service, you can stitch different services together (that’s the orchestration part) to create new services. You can even feed network intelligence into the orchestration engine to create new services based on individual behaviors or unique characteristics. With service orchestration and automation, it becomes possible (and profitable) to create targeted services on demand.
The road to virtualization starts here
Transforming a legacy communications network into a virtual, cloud-optimized network isn’t a walk in the park – it’s a journey. Every journey needs to start somewhere, preferably on a path to short-term return on investment so that your network can experience the benefits of virtualization sooner. For mobile service providers, virtualizing the mobile core can be a good starting point, but it’s also a complex process and not without risk. When building out a virtual mobile core, it really needs to do be in parallel with the legacy core to prevent disruption of critical services. At the edge of the network, the risk is lower and the short-term benefits can be greater. For this reason, many service providers may wish to start their journey with an element like their session border controllers.
A virtual, cloud-optimized SBC offers immediate short-term gains through capital expense reduction and increased scalability. A service provider can deploy real-time communications services in new regions in minutes using virtualized SBCs. With physical SBCs, there is cabling, installation, housing and energy costs, etc., all of which can add weeks of time. Service providers will often deploy virtualized SBCs to expand (rather than replace) their legacy SBC architecture, which is a good idea so long as the physical and virtual platforms deliver the same features and user experience.
The SBCs’ role in the network also makes it a logical candidate for early virtualization. As voice and video call volumes increase, SBCs need to scale up to handle the increase in SIP traffic as well as the increase in encryption (e.g., IPsec, SRTP) and media transcoding. As service providers become cloud service providers, virtual, cloud-optimized SBCs will also allow them to easily and securely shift SBC resources to support dynamic traffic requirements.
SBCs are service providers’ gateway to the cloud. Virtualizing those gateways opens up the network to more opportunities while increasing security and more revenue.
Editor’s Note: In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this Reader Forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but we maintain some editorial control to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
