Positive outlook for virtualization and SDN deployment

The Virtualization 100 group, launched in 2014 by the Network Virtualization and SDN World global congress, have announced the results of an in-depth industry survey at their inaugural gathering in London.

The Virtualization 100’s survey responses reflect the changes that are currently happening in the SDN and NFV industry. The main findings of the survey reveal that the SDN and NFV industry have a positive future:
· 96% of respondents, made up of individuals from operators, vendors and analyst firms from Asia Pacific, Middle East, East and West Europe and North and South America at Director-level or above, considered SDN and virtualization to be “very important” or “essential” to the future of telco networks
· The primary benefits of SDN and virtualization are recognised as flexibility, scalability and quicker time to market for new services
· Respondents voted Cloud Data Centre, the LTE Core Network (EPC) and Multi-layer transport network as the top three positions within the network where SDN and Virtualization should first be applied.
· 68% of respondents considered Fixed Networks to be the primary driver behind SDN and virtualization adoption in telco networks, as opposed to LTE, LTE Advanced or 5G.
· Geographical locations for initial deployments are predicted equally between North America, Asia Pacific and Western Europe

The most admirable operators in the industry were voted to be Telefonica, for having deployed the first NFV trial with real users, Deutsche Telekom, for their pioneering efforts with the Terastream project, AT&T, for setting up the new Domain 2.0 initiative and communicating a clear message to the vendor industry, and NTT, for leading the way with SDN deployments.

The most admirable vendors were considered to be Alcatel-Lucent, for launching their CloudBand ecosystem, Tail-f, a small start-up company now working on core SDN projects with two of the biggest operators in the world, Deutsche Telekom and AT&T, and Cisco, for embracing SDN/NFV across their business unit and backing open-source initiatives.

Discussing the results from the Virtualization 100 initiative’s inaugural survey, Georgina Wilczek, Head of Content for Informa’s Network Virtualization Global Events, commented:
“The Virtualization 100 initiative is an excellent new resource for the SDN and Virtualization industry, utilizing the talents, opinions and experiences of many high-profile industry figures to help advance SDN and Virtualization innovation and help move the industry forward.

“The findings of this survey indicate a very positive outlook for the future of SDN and Virtualization initiatives right across the world. However, the survey also reveals many remaining barriers to SDN and NFV adoption which need to be tackled before SDN and Virtualization can fully take off. These include lack of vendor interoperability, lack of standards, unproven reliability of new technologies, inefficient back-office OSS/BSS systems and high migration costs. Certainly, the industry has come a long way in a short time, but there is still much more to do.”