SDN, NFV And ‘softwarization’ Coming Of Age – NFV/SDN Reality Check Episode 41

Software is nothing new, but the reach of software solutions is reshaping the technology space. The telecom market is not immune to this reshaping as networks are increasingly taking on the appearance of data centers that for years have relied on virtualization software technologies.

In looking to shape the impact of these technologies, standards bodies have been working overtime to bring together ecosystem participants in order to provide some structure to the wide-open world of software.

One of those organizations is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which earlier this month held its Globecom event that included a focus on software-defined networking and network functions virtualization, recently launched an SDN initiative as a “cross-Society IEEE worldwide program addressing the main techno-economic aspects concerning SDN and NFV.” The initiative is composed of seven committees, including Conference, Education, Publications, Publicity, Standards, Pre-Industrial and Outreach, and counts 50 volunteers tapping into more than 1,400 experts worldwide.

I recently had the chance to speak with Eileen Healy, co-chair of the SDN initiative at IEEE, to discuss the organizations work in addressing specific stakes and challenges in what is said have been “raised by network ‘softwarization’ that goes beyond technical issues to also encompass skill development and economics.

Also on this week’s show, we also look at some of the top headlines across the NFV and SDN space:

--The Linux Foundation’s OPNFV Project teased plans for its second software platform release, noting “Brahmaputra" was set to be unveiled in February.

Speaking on the organizations’ blog, Ericsson’s Chris Price said OPNFV had recently hit “milestone D, which means the release is API and feature-complete.”

Price, who leads open source industry collaboration for Ericsson in the areas of NFV, cloud and SDN and is an active member of the technical steering committees of the OpenDaylight and OPNFV, said the release was focused on “further stability of the deployment, new features, projects and enhanced documentation.”

In June, OPNFV released its first software platform, dubbed Arno, which it said was a “develop-focused” release designed to foster the development of NFV, virtual network functions and use case-based testing.

--Affirmed Networks scored a deal with Spain-based mobile network provider Aire Networks to provide its Virtual Evolved Packet Core platform as the foundation for Aire’s network virtualization plans.

As part of the deal, Aire is set to deploy Affirmed’s Mobile Content Cloud solution to help in the virtualization of its mobile network infrastructure.

Affirmed said the NFV platform is designed to help lower operating costs and increase flexibility for mobile carriers by “moving away from legacy infrastructures to a more agile and flexible virtualized architecture” as it “empowers the creation and launch of new services and applications in a matter of hours and days – instead of months with traditional hardware-based products.”

Financial terms of the deal were not announced.

Thanks for watching this week’s NFV/SDN Reality Check, which is the final episode of the year. I want to wish everyone a safe and sound holiday season and please make sure to catch new episodes of the show beginning in January.

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