INDUSTRY WATCH
For example, more than 60% of respondents
felt they were not entirely on top of their
purchasing methodology for NFV solutions.
A third felt they needed to reduce costs of
their purchasing methodologies by looking
into or implementing automated systems.
Meanwhile, an air of implementation
uncertainty still permeates the industry.
Compared to last year’s annual report, fewer
companies are confident they are doing a
‘great job’ with NFV deployment. Only 8%
felt NFV was easy to implement on schedule
and 22% experienced more difficulty than
expected. Nearly half of respondents (48%)
felt it was as difficult as expected.
The biggest cited barriers to successful
implementation are high cost and
complexity of deployment (36%), followed
by a lack of clear business cases (32%).
“NFV architectures have the potential to
provide the necessary network flexibility
to enable new service delivery models and
elastic network scaling to reduce total cost of
ownership. However, this potential will only
be realised if the solutions deployed on NFV
architectures are easy to integrate into the
automation and orchestration toolchain,”
said Salaets.
“Meanwhile, challenges still remain with
perceptions about implementation and
purchasing methodologies. The industry
needs a simpler, automated process.
Service providers should consider vendors
that can help overcome these challenges
and maximise opportunities, for example
by providing packaged Virtual Network
Functions (VNF) services with ready-to-install
solutions. To ease purchasing, planning and
sizing, service providers should also look for
consumption or throughput-based models
that fully align with their services.”
F5 has also made moves to enable 5G
services with new solutions for service
providers. It is introducing a new Network
Functions Virtualisation (NFV) package that
will enable the optimisation and scale of
existing 4G and new 5G networks, along
with other improvements to help providers
speed up delivery of new 5G services and
secure their networks at every layer. Some of
its other new enhancements are designed
to allow service providers to launch 5G
services. The company has also announced
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a new service and support plan specifically
designed to meet the complex and evolving
needs of service providers.
From F5’s 2019 State of Application Services
survey, it’s clear that service providers are
emerging as technology leaders. Four out
of five (80%) responding service providers
indicated they are engaged in Digital
Transformation initiatives. The push to
virtualise the network and increase the
speed to deliver new applications is driving
the adoption of emerging technologies and
underscoring the importance of application
services that help manage critical
performance and security requirements.
A total of 71% service providers report
deploying automation and orchestration
solutions, with 60% using containers.
“After years of preparing for 5G, we’re seeing
progress as telecoms and service providers
begin to implement the infrastructure to
make its promise a reality,” said James
Feger, Vice President and General Manager,
Service Provider at F5. “We’re delivering
virtualisation solutions and custom services
that help them maximise the substantial
investments in their current 4G networks
now, while optimising their infrastructure to
enable the scale required to deploy the 5G
networks tomorrow.”
New capabilities and performance
for NFV
With F5, organisations can simplify the
complete lifecycle management of VNF
services, unlocking essential scale and
automation for newly virtualised networks
without burdensome complexity. Unlike
competitors, F5 offers packaged solutions
that are simple to purchase, deploy, manage
and upgrade in a ‘use before you buy’ model
with subscription and perpetual licensing
options. This approach is an ideal fit for
mobile operators and service providers
looking to software-based infrastructures as
part of their network evolution.
To this end, F5 is announcing an expansion
of its NFV packaged solutions with a new
Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT) standalone
package. The new packaged solution,
which includes the F5 VNF Manager, will
offer a broad set of tools that enable
service providers to successfully migrate
to IPv6 while continuing to support and
interoperate with existing IPv4 devices
and content, simplifying network planning,
sizing and purchasing. The CGNAT VNF
package will be available in the first half of
calendar year 2019.
F5’s NFV offerings will also see new
performance enhancements through Intel’s
Quick Assist Technology (QAT). BIG-IP Virtual
Edition support of Intel QAT for SSL/TLS
acceleration and offload will provide up to
four times the performance of encryption
done in software, freeing up the CPU to
perform other application delivery tasks
including L7 inspection, policy enforcement
and programmability.
Higher performance and increased
throughput will also be enabled with BIG-IP
Virtual Edition support of the Mellanox
ConnectX family of network interface
adapters, including 100G. Working together,
F5 and Mellanox solutions can boost data
plane performance to near line rate using
optimised drivers that reduce the overhead
associated with processing packets. Mellanox
network adapters will significantly improve
the performance of entire portfolio of F5
VNF solutions.
“5G is going to lead to an exponential
increase in data usage and the creation of
new applications and services that have
only been imagined in the past,” said Amit
Krig, SVP, Network Adapter Group, Mellanox.
“ConnectX was developed to meet these
needs both now and in the future. With
multiple times the performance packed into
the same infrastructure footprint, service
providers working with F5 and Mellanox can
maximise the return on their 5G network
build-out and quickly reap the benefits of
new 5G services.” n
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