In a major sign that adoption of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) are gradually increasing, a top executive from Chinese technology firm Huawei said that up to the first half of 2017, the company has deployed more than 260 NFV projects and over 300 SDN projects around the world. “Up to the first half of 2017, Huawei has deployed more than 260 NFV projects and over 300 SDN projects around the world,” Yuan Bo, Director of Network Architecture Transformation at Huawei's Carrier Business Group.
In this gradual rise Huawei is not alone, a month ago at VMworld 2017 Europe, virtual infrastructure firm VMware had signed a software licensing agreement with Vodafone to support operator's global roll out of NFV. Software-defined virtualized platforms and services are an important part of the plans for Vodafone as company evolve their mobile networks towards the introduction of 5G in around 2020. In addition, several other companies have announced their partnership for SDN and NFV in recent past.
Globally telcos are undergoing economic compression because their main services still are voice and data. They are trying hard to figure out, how to get out of that and compress the cost that they are being subjected so they have started looking Telco Cloud. They used to have siloed equipment one per function. But today due to SDN and NFV they have that as a single platform infrastructure on top of which they can drop multiple virtual network functions. This will make them more agile like Whatsapp.
Huawei said that its convergent telecom cloud is a cloud infrastructure platform built on the OpenStack open architecture that features unified O&M, cloud-and-network synergy, and ICT convergence. This platform helps carriers significantly reduce O&M costs and shortens new service provisioning time from months to days.
“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 company.
