Martin Halstead was one of the top speakers at this year's SDN and Network Virtualisation track at AfricaCom last November. As CTO for NFV at HP, he has in-depth
knowledge of industry trends in SDN and NFV with over 20
years experience specializing in Communications Services Provider networking
environments.
He has a strong interest in the transformation of Telco networks and how SDN
can help enable that transformation.
He shares his thoughts on virtualization - a key opportunity for operators in Africa in the coming years.
How to be Telco Cloud Native
SDN isn’t just about network virtualization
As we continue the journey to the Telco Cloud, the role of SDN has become more
clear. SDN can become the key technology to enable a move towards so
called ‘cloud native’ telecoms applications, so I pulled together this 3
step guide to how I recommend our CSP customers use SDN to realize the full
benefit of NFV deployments.
1. Network overlays are not enough
Leveraging SDN does more
than link VNFs (Virtualized Network Functions) by so called ‘network overlays’.
The right solution is capable of offloading non-essential network functions
from the VNFs themselves. This will have the dual benefit of ‘slimming down’
the network functions required within each VNF as well as providing a VNF
vendor independent, subscriber aware networking layer that each VNF can call
on. Telco grade features such as HA (High Availability), load balancing,
per subscriber service chaining and backup paths etc. are no longer needed
within the VNF which means they can more easily evolve to a micro services
based architecture, critical to the nirvana of ‘cloud native’ telecoms
applications.
2.
Simple solution for a complex problem
The majority of core Telco
VNFs available today from the traditional TEMs (Telecoms Equipment
Manufacturers) consist of monolithic software with integrated, proprietary
networking stacks created with mostly irrelevant requirements stemming from the
physical appliances they aim to replace. These complex composite VNFs
expect the virtual infrastructure on which they are deployed to be simple in
terms of providing dumb network ‘pipes’ linking same vendor VNFs. The problem
with this approach is that it doesn’t help realise the full business benefits
of NFV, primarily the ability to reduce time to market for new services by
rapidly deploying simple disaggregated network functions, designed for the
cloud from multiple TEMs and ISVs while gaining operational savings from having
a single, network feature rich NFV platform, capable of independently hosting
VNFs from multiple TEMs.
3.
Select a partner that understands the value
of vendor independence
HP Enterprise has the ability
to be disruptive in NFV as we are TEM independent and have a proven, feature
rich NFV platform that combines Telco grade resiliency, manageability and
performance with fully open, industry leading and massively scalable SDN.
Without that combination, it is hard to see how the promise of SDN and NDV can
be fulfilled, namely the ability to separate the NFV platform from the actual
Telco functions so that multiple VNFs – core Telco functions as well as
innovative value added services from multiple vendors can be rapidly deployed
and seamlessly and consistently managed via a uniform, network feature rich abstraction
layer
Reach out to your local Hewlett Packard Enterprise sales person and they will be able to tell you more about how our
NFV platform is changing the telecommunications market.
The SDN and Network Virtualisation track will take place again at AfricaCom, Cape Town. South Africa, 15-17 November 2016.
