Changing Telecom industry landscape
More recently, enterprises increasingly look to open source cloud solutions, and OpenStack specifically as the leading open source cloud technology.
In the Telecommunication industry, Network Operators and Telco are now facing the same challenges and require similar core architectural advances. Their networks are comprised of large, siloes proprietary platforms that are becoming increasingly difficult to scale, manage, and operate. The primary challenge is how to quickly deploy and operationalize new services while maintaining economic efficiencies.
Often, the cost and complexity are amplified because the hardware-based appliances that are dedicated to performing a single function within the network have short lifecycles and consume large amounts of space and power. And, the rapid growth of data and multimedia applications is causing exploding network traffic at the same time that NO revenues from new services are stagnating.
The combination of market conditions and network constraints is demanding that Network Operators and Telco pursue a cloud based approach much like that adopted by the IT industry. However, technologies and design principles used as the basis for typical IT cloud applications cannot be applied directly to network services without accounting for carrier-grade requirements.
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), coupled with Software Defined Networking (SDN), offer a way for Network Operators and Telco to address these problems. By deploying OpenStack as the enabling cloud platform, NOs have a proven way to implement NFV and SDN to leverage the benefits of open source software to further reduce costs and position themselves competitive .
The Telecommunication industry is currently stand on the cusp of a new era in network management. SDN and NFS promise to revolutionize the industry by enabling carriers to have more dynamic control over their resources and environments. This new-found level of control will allow Network Operators and Telcos to make real-time adjustments to network conditions as needed, diverting assets to high-volume users or redirecting traffic in the event of a localized outage. Given such bold assertions, mobile operators may wonder how exactly they can come to obtain these capabilities. The answer is cloud-based computing and network platforms – most notably, OpenStack.
OpenStack – Open Cloud Computing
OpenStack's origins began in January 2010 as a joint project between NASA and Rackspace Hosting aimed at creating an open source cloud platform that could be operated on standard, legacy hardware. Since then, more than 200 high-profile organizations spanning various industries have joined the OpenStack project, helping to advance and define the underlying infrastructure. Recognizing the benefits that cloud systems could yield for carriers, including laying the groundwork for service-enhancing technologies such as SDN and NFV, several telcos have since then signed on or launched their own OpenStack ventures.
OpenStack is winning support across the IT industry while NFV (Network Function
AT&T, for instance, became the first U.S.-based telecom to join the OpenStack project as well as deployed new services in support of mobile app development. IDG News Service reported at the time that the company's Cloud Architect enables mobile operators to deploy new services on an as-needed basis without delay. Telcos such as AT&T were ideal candidates for OpenStack adoption as their existing data center and network environments presented infrastructure that could be built upon and enhanced with an infusion of cloud-based solutions.
OpenStack distinguishes itself with scalability, compability
So why does OpenStack engender such interest within the telecom industry?
OpenStack – as well as SDN – offers the right combination of scalability and compatibility. These factors cannot be ignored when considering the deployment of cloud- and network-based solutions within the telecom sector as many carriers fear vendor lock-in. If Telcos make all of their router, switch and other network component purchases through a single company, they are likely to spend more than if they bought this hardware piecemeal. Often, compatibility concerns force carriers to work solely with one vendor, but a solution like OpenStack can broaden the possibility of driving down costs by making purchases on a case-by-case basis.
These considerations helped convince Ericsson to choose OpenStack as the foundation for its carrier-grade cloud platform in February 2013. Unlike other industries, telecoms expect their hardware purchases to stand the test of time. Network components could be in place for upwards of a decade, increasing the potential for compatibility concerns. With OpenStack, Ericsson is able provide telco-level virtual solutions that run on existing infrastructure components.
The Telecoms market is particularly interested in OpenStack and SDN's ability to scale up or down service levels. Matching high-quality, intensive services with those users who want them can be difficult with standard network infrastructure. The dynamic scalability of OpenStack allows carrier to better manage their resources and deliver services based on need and priority.
Costs and licensing, Because there are no licensing costs (with OpenStack), Telcos are free to define their offering and compete at whatever level they want. This is a unique feature in the industry, as all other offerings are either very expensive in terms of licensing – therefore blocking you out of some types of market –or limited in terms of back-end (integration) – therefore not allowing the Telcos to give the level of offering they want.
The goal of NFV is to decouple logical network functions from the underlying hardware. The principles of NFV were defined by the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) committee formed by a group of Network Operators and Telcos and described in a whitepaper published in 2012.
In general, NFV as a network architecture concept proposes the use of technologies common in IT infrastructure virtualization and cloud computing, and applying them to telecom networks, creating so-called virtualized network functions (VNF). Utilizing VNF building blocks as a basis, Telcos can create communication services comprised of these blocks interconnected, or chained, together. In this environment, VNF is deployed on one or more virtual machines running different virtual network function components (VNFC), software and processes.
Instead of custom or proprietary hardware appliances, NFV emphasizes the use of common, off-the-shelf hardware such as high-volume servers, switches, and storage.
NFV brings several benefits to the telecommunication industry, including:
SDN (OpenFlow protocol ) is defined as the separation of the control plane and the data plane, i.e. decoupling the switching or routing from the packet forwarding engine, and making the control plane programmable. This provides the ability to modify and manage network layout, traffic flows, and quality of service easily, and quickly deploy it in enterprise data centers.
This, in turn, leads to the commoditization of traditional networking hardware such as routers and switches, freeing companies from vendor lock-in and potentially bringing hardware costs down.
The Telecommunication industry is looking for new ways to innovate and deploy services in a flexible way. SDN is a technology that could enable the evolution from the traditional approach of how mobile and fixed line operators provide connectivity to a more flexible, on-demand bandwidth and new service delivery.
For OTT players (like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) and many large enterprise data centers, including most large telco operators, SDN is already a reality.
In case of Telcos specifically, SDN also brings some unique challenges, like the need to migrate and/or integrate existing systems and software with a new dynamic environment. This is true on all levels starting from OSS/BSS systems usually designed, developed and deployed for less dynamic Telco networks. With the introduction of SDN and NFV, those systems have to deal with new challenges and much more complex provisioning scenarios spanning all layers compared to the current, isolated network layer approach. The same Telco specific challenges and requirements for SDN are also true for other areas of telecom network subsystems like Core and Radio where network latency, QoS and performance are key challenges.
SDN delivering substantial benefits to both enterprises and carriers, including:
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) offers the potential for both enhancing service delivery and reducing overall costs. By enabling NFV with Software-Defined Networking (SDN), network operators can realize even greater benefits from this promising new use of cloud technology.
SDN can accelerate NFV deployment by offering a scalable, elastic, and on-demand architecture well suited to the dynamic NFV communications requirements for both virtual and physical networking infrastructures.
NFV and SDN aims to reduce equipment costs and decrease time to market while attaining scalability, elasticity, and a strong ecosystem.. Much like NFV, SDN accelerates innovation by breaking the bond between proprietary hardware and control/application software. Both architectures are optimized for the dynamic cloud environment at carrier scale.
Both NFV and SDN seek to leverage automation and virtualization to achieve greater agility while reducing both OpEx and CapEx. Whereas NFV is intended to optimize the deployment of network functions (such as firewalls, DNS, load balancers, etc.), OpenFlow-based SDN is focused on optimizing the underlying networks.
OpenStack – as well as SDN – offers the right combination of scalability and compatibility. These factors cannot be ignored when considering the deployment of cloud- and network-based solutions within the telecom sector as many carriers fear vendor lock-in. If Telcos make all of their router, switch and other network component purchases through a single company, they are likely to spend more than if they bought this hardware piecemeal. Often, compatibility concerns force carriers to work solely with one vendor, but a solution like OpenStack can broaden the possibility of driving down costs by making purchases on a case-by-case basis.
These considerations helped convince Ericsson to choose OpenStack as the foundation for its carrier-grade cloud platform in February 2013. Unlike other industries, telecoms expect their hardware purchases to stand the test of time. Network components could be in place for upwards of a decade, increasing the potential for compatibility concerns. With OpenStack, Ericsson is able provide telco-level virtual solutions that run on existing infrastructure components.
The Telecoms market is particularly interested in OpenStack and SDN's ability to scale up or down service levels. Matching high-quality, intensive services with those users who want them can be difficult with standard network infrastructure. The dynamic scalability of OpenStack allows carrier to better manage their resources and deliver services based on need and priority.
Costs and licensing, Because there are no licensing costs (with OpenStack), Telcos are free to define their offering and compete at whatever level they want. This is a unique feature in the industry, as all other offerings are either very expensive in terms of licensing – therefore blocking you out of some types of market –or limited in terms of back-end (integration) – therefore not allowing the Telcos to give the level of offering they want.
NFV - Network Functions Virtualization
The goal of NFV is to decouple logical network functions from the underlying hardware. The principles of NFV were defined by the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) committee formed by a group of Network Operators and Telcos and described in a whitepaper published in 2012.
In general, NFV as a network architecture concept proposes the use of technologies common in IT infrastructure virtualization and cloud computing, and applying them to telecom networks, creating so-called virtualized network functions (VNF). Utilizing VNF building blocks as a basis, Telcos can create communication services comprised of these blocks interconnected, or chained, together. In this environment, VNF is deployed on one or more virtual machines running different virtual network function components (VNFC), software and processes.
Instead of custom or proprietary hardware appliances, NFV emphasizes the use of common, off-the-shelf hardware such as high-volume servers, switches, and storage.
NFV brings several benefits to the telecommunication industry, including:
- Reduced equipment costs and reduced power consumption through consolidating equipment and exploiting the economies of scale of the IT industry.
- Increased speed of Time to Market by minimizing the typical network operator cycle of innovation.
- Availability of network appliance multi-version and multi-tenancy, which allows use of a single platform for different applications, users and tenants. This allows network operators to share resources across services and across different customer bases.
- Targeted service introduction based on geography or customer sets is possible. Services can be rapidly scaled up/down as required.
- Enables a wide variety of eco-systems and encourages openness. It opens the virtual appliance market to pure software entrants, small players and academia, encouraging more innovation to bring new services and new revenue streams quickly at much lower risk
- Re-use of existing hardware by NOs will help to control OPEX and CAPEX and promote vendors who can provide innovative software appliances
- Invite new software-centric vendors and in-house software development. This will lead to increased innovation and agility of the telco services.
SDN - Software Defined Networking
SDN (OpenFlow protocol ) is defined as the separation of the control plane and the data plane, i.e. decoupling the switching or routing from the packet forwarding engine, and making the control plane programmable. This provides the ability to modify and manage network layout, traffic flows, and quality of service easily, and quickly deploy it in enterprise data centers.
This, in turn, leads to the commoditization of traditional networking hardware such as routers and switches, freeing companies from vendor lock-in and potentially bringing hardware costs down.
The Telecommunication industry is looking for new ways to innovate and deploy services in a flexible way. SDN is a technology that could enable the evolution from the traditional approach of how mobile and fixed line operators provide connectivity to a more flexible, on-demand bandwidth and new service delivery.
For OTT players (like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) and many large enterprise data centers, including most large telco operators, SDN is already a reality.
In case of Telcos specifically, SDN also brings some unique challenges, like the need to migrate and/or integrate existing systems and software with a new dynamic environment. This is true on all levels starting from OSS/BSS systems usually designed, developed and deployed for less dynamic Telco networks. With the introduction of SDN and NFV, those systems have to deal with new challenges and much more complex provisioning scenarios spanning all layers compared to the current, isolated network layer approach. The same Telco specific challenges and requirements for SDN are also true for other areas of telecom network subsystems like Core and Radio where network latency, QoS and performance are key challenges.
SDN delivering substantial benefits to both enterprises and carriers, including:
- Centralized management and control of networking devices from multiple vendors;
- Improved automation and management by using common APIs to abstract the underlying networking details from the orchestration and provisioning systems and applications
- Rapid innovation through the ability to deliver new network capabilities and services without the need to configure individual devices or wait for vendor releases
- Programmability by operators, enterprises, independent software vendors, and users (not just equipment manufacturers) using common programming environments, which gives all parties new opportunities to drive revenue and differentiation
- Increased network reliability and security as a result of centralized and automated management of network devices, uniform policy enforcement, and fewer configuration errors
- More granular network control with the ability to apply comprehensive and wide-ranging policies at the session, user, device, and application levels
- Better end-user experience as applications exploit centralized network state information to seamlessly adapt network behavior to user needs.
NFV AND SDN
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) offers the potential for both enhancing service delivery and reducing overall costs. By enabling NFV with Software-Defined Networking (SDN), network operators can realize even greater benefits from this promising new use of cloud technology.
SDN can accelerate NFV deployment by offering a scalable, elastic, and on-demand architecture well suited to the dynamic NFV communications requirements for both virtual and physical networking infrastructures.
NFV and SDN aims to reduce equipment costs and decrease time to market while attaining scalability, elasticity, and a strong ecosystem.. Much like NFV, SDN accelerates innovation by breaking the bond between proprietary hardware and control/application software. Both architectures are optimized for the dynamic cloud environment at carrier scale.
Both NFV and SDN seek to leverage automation and virtualization to achieve greater agility while reducing both OpEx and CapEx. Whereas NFV is intended to optimize the deployment of network functions (such as firewalls, DNS, load balancers, etc.), OpenFlow-based SDN is focused on optimizing the underlying networks.
Network Operators and Telco look to the future with OpenStack, SDN, NFV
Better network management will be crucial for telecoms looking to continue maintaining healthy bottom lines as the average revenue per user in this sector has decreased recently. Using the cloud and virtualization to gain more control over service delivery, carriers can utilize their available resources to their full potential. Furthermore, because OpenStack is open source, Network Operators and Telco can avoid breaking the bank on expensive platform licenses.
Deploying OpenStack will be the first step toward launching SDN and NFV solutions for many telecom members. The cloud platform lays the groundwork for carriers to begin infusing their network environments with these advanced technologies. Ultimately, the telecom sector is moving toward systems in which network capabilities are decoupled from their hardware components. OpenStack will help usher in this new era by providing a platform to do so.
For more info -> Leveraging OpenStack to Solve Telco Needs (Intro to SDN/NFV) video