VMware CSP strategy focuses on NFV, mobility and IoT

At Mobile World Congress 2017, VMware is focusing on its unified software-defined architecture spanning network functions virtualisation (NFV), mobility and the Internet of Things (IoT), through which global communications service providers (CSPs) can benefit from potential new revenue streams with sustainable cost reductions, increased flexibility and security and a modernised network that is 5G- and Internet of Things (IoT)-ready.

VMware explains that CSPs today must balance high customer expectations with business challenges such as increased competition and cost, lack of service differentiation, and new business models. They must simultaneously look internally at how they build their networks for both today and tomorrow, while looking externally for new service opportunities.

Over-the-Top (OTT) providers have the benefit of speed and agility to deliver new high margin services without having the constraints of network build-out costs, eroding revenue and creating customer churn. On the horizon, 5G networks represent the next major wave of mobile infrastructure upgrades. Accelerating capacity demands from high-bandwidth services such as video and virtual reality, coupled with the distributed nature of infrastructure components in IoT, could significantly impact the reliability, performance and quality of experience delivered to subscribers if networks are not architected correctly. For CSPs’ business customers, mobile computing presents new management and security challenges, creating an opportunity for new managed services offerings.

VMware is helping CSPs successfully deliver new services faster and improve overall customer satisfaction, while driving down costs. With VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture combined with virtual network functions (VNFs) and applications from a rich ecosystem of partners, global CSPs are delivering services such as voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE), IMS, enterprise software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN), mobility and workspace management, as well as IoT services for connected cars, smart stadiums and cities.

“In the fast-evolving technology landscape, continued success and growth for Telcos and CSPs depends on transforming from connectivity providers to innovators in delivering rich services, content and personalised experiences,” said Shekar Ayyar, executive VP and GM, Telco Group at VMware.

“Software-defined, virtualised architectures are the catalysts helping service providers modernise their networks, making them 5G ready, and opening their businesses to new possibilities. With VMware’s software-defined architecture for NFV, mobility, and IoT, CSPs can accelerate service innovation, improve operations and management, and deliver a range of scalable and secure mobile applications and services.”

VMWare is addressing the need of CSPs to serve more use cases for more customer types, all while integrating and unifying the underlying network and datacenter infrastructure. At the very least, this transformed infrastructure has to accommodate cloudification and simplified management. Due to the increasing demand for customised, targeted services, CSPs need to be able to bring those services to market quickly, manage them more efficiently, and provide them across a growing number of devices and networks,” added Andy Hicks, Research Director, IDC EMEA Telecommunications Group. 

“The corporate market is a growth segment for M1, and we have continually enhanced our offerings to better serve these customers through our connectivity solutions and cloud-based data centre. Our next-generation platform powered by VMware NSX, enables us to create a complete network and security virtualisation platform, with advanced security capabilities that enable enterprises seeking scalability and better performance,” said Willis Sim, Chief Corporate Sales and Solutions Officer, M1, a telecommunications provider in Singapore.

“As Singapore's first fully integrated info-communications company, StarHub is focused on empowering its customers with world-class information, communication and entertainment services. Virtualising our critical applications with VMware has enabled StarHub to deliver a more agile and flexible infrastructure that responds faster to dynamic business demands. Hardware resources are better optimised, achieving significant savings without compromising application performance. Applications can be easily moved across servers, providing higher availability and scalability resulting in a seamless and better customer experience,” said John Tan, CIO, Singapore telecommunications provider StarHub.

“IIJ has deployed VMware virtualised infrastructure and management in production across our network services, cloud service and IT environments. Collaborating with VMware, we delivered the IIJ Omnibus Service to transform the economics our CPE-based services. VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture enables us to implement a unified, multi-service platform that simplifies ongoing operations management and delivers the agility to adapt quickly to new service opportunities,” said Shinri Kimura, GM, Service Infrastructure Division, Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ).

“As communications service providers undertake massive digital transformation initiatives, they are increasingly investing in modern network architectures, applications and connectivity. We see this as a huge opportunity to offer CSPs a unique combination of scalable solutions to meet their needs. As the de facto industry standard in virtualisation, VMware will continue to be strategic in helping to grow our partners’ capabilities and portfolio of offerings,” said Jay Snyder, Senior VP, Global Alliances, Service Providers and Industries, Dell EMC.

At Mobile World Congress VMware made a number of product announcements, including the introduction of VMware vCloud NFV 2.0, designed to modernise network architectures and operations for global CSPs.

The foundation for network transformation and modernisation, VMware-style, depends on VMware vCloud NFV. With more than 80 NFV deployments by more than 45 CSPs serving more than 300 million subscribers worldwide, VMware vCloud NFV accelerates service innovation and delivery, reduces costs, and simplifies network operations. The vCloud NFV platform enables organisations to deploy a multi-vendor and multi-function NFV platform today that delivers service automation, secure multi-tenancy, operations management and carrier grade reliability with 5G readiness.

VMware vCloud NFV is an ETSI-compliant modular and multi-tenancy NFV platform that combines a highly available, carrier-grade network functions virtualisation infrastructure (NFVI) with Day 2* operations management and service assurance capabilities. Built from software-defined infrastructure and management solutions, the vCloud NFV platform can improve economics through accelerated service delivery, operational excellence and lower infrastructure costs.

With vCloud NFV, VMware is delivering openness and choice across the NFV technology stack -- NFVI, Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIM), VNF and NFV Orchestration (NFVO) -- and continues to advance vCloud NFV interoperability across mobile, wireline, Internet of Things, software-defined WAN, and security use cases. As virtualisation is a prerequisite to 5G network buildout, VMware vCloud NFV delivers a platform for new service development today, with an architecture that will support CSP implementation of 5G technology in the future.

"In today's highly competitive environment, CSPs must deliver innovative services faster, with the best end-to-end customer experience and at the lowest cost. Current network architectures, including some virtualized deployments, remain rigid and expensive to build and manage," said Gabriele Di Piazza, VP, solutions, Telco NFV Group, VMware. "With more than 80 NFV deployments by more than 45 CSPs serving 300 million subscribers worldwide, VMware vCloud NFV enables the transformation of network architectures, services delivery, operations and economics through a more dynamic, agile network built on software."

VMware vCloud will take advantage of new innovations across VMware's entire virtualised compute, networking, storage and management portfolio. These will include the newest versions of VMware vSphere with Operations Management, VMware NSX for vSphere, VMware VSAN, VMware vCloud Director for Service Provider, VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware vRealize Network Insight, VMware vRealize Log Insight, VMware vRealize Operations Advanced, and VMware Site Recovery Manager.

VMware vCloud NFV 2.0 will advance several critical areas for CSPs:

Service automation: vCloud NFV accelerates service creation, onboarding and deployment, and enables policy-based resource and workload allocation across the NFVI.

Secure multi-tenancy: vCloud NFV helps CSPs achieve complete service isolation in a secure multi-tenant environment across NFVI functions.

Operations management: VMware vCloud NFV delivers NFVI operational automation with 360-degree visibility along with proactive and predictive analytics to deliver performance feedback and fast remediation capabilities.

Carrier-grade availability: VMware vCloud NFV is a highly available platform providing service continuity in production networks at scale. With simplified infrastructure lifecycle management, service providers will be able to seamlessly upgrade and apply patches with minimal impact to operations and network stability.

The VMware Ready for NFV certification further provides CSPs with the confidence that VMware partner VNF solutions will seamlessly and effectively deploy, run, and interoperate with VMware vCloud NFV. To date, 34 VNFs have been certified as VMware Ready for NFV, with many being deployed in production customer environments today.

"We believe that the journey towards virtualisation which combines NFV, SDN, and cloud native applications will be more disruptive than the move from circuit switched to packet networking. CSPs will rely on suppliers that have proven deployments to manage risk and achieve the benefits that virtualisation promise. VMware is a pioneer in virtualisation software and services. It is bringing telco grade solutions to market and complementing such solutions with full lifecycle management with VMware vCloud NFV 2.0. Deployment risk are reduced with VMware's certification programme which brings together a diverse set of VNF ecosystem partners," said Patrick Kelly, Founder and Principal Analyst at Appledore Research Group.

"Our goal is to help service providers digitally transform their operations and delivery models with modern infrastructure using common, scalable and flexible building blocks. The combination of Dell EMC with VMware vCloud NFV 2.0 software demonstrates exactly the type of 'better together' solutions we're developing for services providers, helping increase agility and speed while improving their economics," said Tom Burns, Senior VP, networking, service provider & enterprise infrastructure, Dell EMC.

Open standards and open source will play a major role in defining the future architectures upon which CSPs deliver services, VMware notes. With VMware Integrated OpenStack, the vCloud NFV platform supports an open architecture for integration and interoperability. Additionally, VMware is a leader of many leading open source initiatives.

VMware recently joined AT&T, China Mobile and the world’s leading operators as a founding member of the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project. ONAP comes from the merger of open source ECOMP and Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O), two of the largest open source networking initiatives, to create a harmonised and comprehensive framework for real-time, policy-driven software automation of virtual network functions that will enable software, network, IT and cloud providers and developers to rapidly create new services. VMware is also a major participant in OpenStack, Open vSwitch and Open Source MANO (OSM).

Interested?

The VMware vCloud NFV 2.0 bundle will be generally available in Q1 FY18 (February 4, 2017 to May 5, 2017), and will include the following software: VMware vSphere with Operations Management 6.5, VMware Integrated OpenStack 3.1, VMware vCloud Director for Service Provider 8.20, VMware vRealize Log Insight 4.0, VMware vRealize Operations Advanced and VMware vSAN Standard 6.5. VMware NSX for vSphere 6.3, VMware vCenter 6.5, vRealize Network Insight 3.3 and VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.5 are sold separately.

Check out the list of VMware Ready for NFV certified solutions on the VMware Solution Exchange (VSX).

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*Day two activities are those which occur later in the deployment of a platform, as opposed to 'day one'.