Huawei boasts more than 560 NFV and SDN deployments worldwide for first half of 2017
Global network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) adoption is on the rise, as underscored by a recent announcement from Chinese technology firm Huawei. According to the company, over the course of the first half this year, Huawei launched more than 560 NFV and SDN related projects worldwide. “Up to the first half of 2017, Huawei has deployed more than 260 NFV projects and over 300 SDN projects around the world,” said Yuan Bo, director of Network Architecture Transformation at Huawei’s Carrier Business Group, in a keynote address at 2017 SDN NFV World Congress.
NFV and SDN are two budding technologies that are changing the way telcos conducts business, both of which promise to reduce capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX). The former decouples software from hardware, allowing services providers to spin up network functions on nodes quickly. The latter enables administrators to direct traffic flows from a central console through application program interfaces (APIs).
Operators have embraced the telecom cloud while adopting NFV and SDN. Based on a decoupled native cloud architecture, Huawei said its All Cloud core network is a virtualized solution supporting control and user-plane separation (CUPS), in addition to distributed deployment of mobile edge computing (MEC).
“Huawei actively builds an All Cloud open ecosystem and has established over 10 cloud labs around the world, facilitating nearby access, nearby certification, and nearby testing for partners. In addition, Huawei actively engages in open-source projects, makes continuous contributions to open-source communities, carries out open certification planning, and achieves win-win results with commercial partners to embrace an era of All Cloud network,” said the company.
Huawei isn’t the only company spearheading the shift toward global NFV and SDN adoption. Last month, for instance, Vodafone landed a deal with VMware, which signed a software licensing agreement to support Vodafone’s global roll out of NFV. Software-defined virtualized platform is a pivotal aspect of Vodafone’s goal to commercialized 5G by 2020. Moreover, according to a Technology Business Research report, the NFV and SDN markets are expected to reach $158 billion by 2021 thanks to early adopters like AT&T.
