The document discusses the evolution and value of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), emphasizing its role in enabling greater elasticity and scalability in network applications to meet dynamic demand. It highlights the shift from closed, specialized systems to open, virtualized platforms that support efficient resource allocation and simplified operations. The potential benefits of NFV include cost reduction, improved flexibility, and the ability to deploy innovative applications quickly, although there are challenges to overcome in realizing its full value.

1. Network Functions Virtualization: The New Virtual Reality
Marcus Weldon
Corporate CTO

2. VIRTUALIZATION: A (CYNICAL) ENGINEER’S VIEW
VIRTUALIZATION IS THE ANSWER BUT WE NEED TO BE MORE THAN BLIND MONKEYS !
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3. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
FORCES AT PLAY AND CONSEQUENCES
FORCE CONSEQUENCE
Evolution
Higher speed packet & optical transport and
Massive Capacity Expansion
backhaul for small cells
Commoditization of Access Wireless is the new “Wireline”
Move to software-defined and ‘virtualized’
Network & Data Center Merging
networks
Revolution
Network Becoming Any web service/enterprise ‘Cloud’ app can fully
Programmable Platform leverage the network
New delivery paradigm and OSS/BSS that adapts
Transformation @ web speed
at web scale and speed
INDUSTRY DISRUPTION DRIVEN BY AND AT WEBSCALE & SPEED
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4. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
ANATOMY OF A TELCO APPLICATION (ATCA)
Specialized blades with dedicated processors
 Many different/specialized OS’s
System Control & Management Cards
 Specialized OAM middleware
I/O and load distribution
 Specialized application middleware
Application Function A
 More cards for more capacity
Application Function B
 More (different) cards for more capacity
STANDARD COMPONENTS IN SPECIALIZED CONFIGURATION = ‘BOX SCALING RULES’
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5. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM ?
BOX SCALING AND WEBSCALE ARE WORLDS AND DECADES APART
• Processors stopped getting faster
a decade ago
 But more transistors per chip =
more processor cores
 But need to create SW that
leverages this parallel scaling
SCALE COMES FROM RUNNING IN PARALLEL
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6. WHAT’S THE ANSWER: PARALLEL SCALING
Amdahl’s Law
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App Speed Up =
(1-P) + P/N
P = Parallel Portion of App
N= # Processors
With Virtualization, P  1
Source: Wikipedia
VIRTUALIZATION IS THE FASTEST PATH TO WEBSCALE FOR NETAPPS
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7. WHAT IS THE INDUSTRY DOING?
NfV Industry Specification Group (ISG)
• ~60 Operator-led activity in ETSI
• Alcatel-Lucent leadership: only one of two
vendors on the NfV Management Team
Goals:
- Align on architecture and terminology
- Identify benefits and assess cost implications
- NFV ISG will not create it is own standards,
rather:
• Specifications that leverage existing industry
standards
• Provide recommendations to other SDOs
INDUSTRY IS VIRTUALLY UNITED
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8. WHAT IS THE VALUE OF VIRTUALIZATION ?
Virtualization Value Factor Qualitative Benefit Quantitative Benefit
Greater ability to react to
Elastic scaling n/a
Gain Factors
changing demand
Dynamic
Control
Shorter time to market for new
Faster deployment cycles n/a
apps/SW releases
Domain-specific network Better network re-use and
n/a
slicing/control OAM/fault isolation
Factor
Depends on
Gain
Cost
Lower CapEx + OpEx (TCO) n/a
Application
NEED TO CLEARLY UNDERSTAND THE GOALS TO DEFINE OPTIMAL ANSWER
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9. VIRTUALIZATION BENEFIT ANALYSIS
Dynamic Control: High Network
Media Gateways CPE
• Elastic scale Apps
• Resource pooling Orchestration
Dynamic Control Gain
Control Plane Functions Functions
• Rapid deployment Network
Media Servers Service Creation
• Location optimization Analytics Functions
Probes
Packet Analytics
Gateways Platforms
Element &
Ethernet Network
Switches Managers
Edge Routers
Core
Routers Cost (TCO):
• NPU vs CPU (CapEx)
Low
• Technicians (OpEx)
Less More
Cost Gain
VIRTUALIZATION BENEFITS MOST (BUT NOT ALL) NETWORK DOMAINS
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10. VIRTUALIZATION BENEFIT ANALYSIS: ePC
Specialized
CapEx OpEx Virtualized
$120M $300M
$100M $250M
$80M $200M
$60M $150M
$40M $100M
$20M $50M
$0M $0M
Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Operations Energy Maintenance Space
Traditional Cloudified Traditional Cloudified
Virtualization will typically lead to an ….which must be offset by a decrease
increase in CapEx for high in OpEx due to automated DC
throughput applications operations (fewer technicians)
LOW BW APPS  TCO GAIN; HIGH BW APPS  NO TCO GAIN (BUT DYNAMIC CONTROL GAIN)
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11. EVOLUTION OF NETWORK FUNCTIONS VIRTUALIZATION
AUTO-ONBOARDING
~Today
AUTO-SCALING
Operations
Evolution
“OPEN” Apps run on GPP + hypervisor,
Closed
VIRTUALIZATION but on specialized HW for
Virtualization
carrier grade reliability
Apps run on Cloud
“CLOSED” Open
infrastructure w/elastic scaling
VIRTUALIZATION virtualization
and Cloud-grade reliability
Auto- Automation of on-boarding,
Onboarding installation and test
Infrastructure Evolution Auto-Scaling
Automatic scaling of app
functions based on demand
WE ARE ALREADY ON THE PATH TO THIS NEW VIRTUAL REALITY
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12. EVOLUTION OF NETWORK FUNCTIONS VIRTUALIZATION
FROM CLOSED TO OPEN VIRTUALIZATION
Closed Virtualization Benefits (Both approaches) Open Virtualization
App A Mgt • More capacity per blade
System App A App A • More optimal use of HW
Middleware VM VM App A Mgt App B Mgt
• Able to reallocate HW to varying
Standard
Proprietary Hypervisor workloads APIs
APIs
Server Blade Common Cloud App A App B
Benefits (Open approach) Management VM VM
App B Mgt • Sharing HW across multiple Hypervisor
System App B App B applications
Middleware VM VM Server Blade
• Operations simplification due to
Standard APIs
Hypervisor common management layer
Proprietary
APIs Server Blade
Risks (Open approach)
• New reliability, performance &SLA models
• Impact on both NetOps & IT orgs
• Failure accountabilities change (NG OSS)
WITH EVERY REWARD COMES RISKS THAT NEED TO BE MANAGED
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13. BUT THE OPPORTUNITY IS BIG
Convergence
Automated, Automated,
Simplified Simplified
Choreography Choreography
Cloudscale
Dynamic Control
Network Services Control
Dynamic Dynamic
Control Control
Telco IP Network Infrastructure
KEY OPPORTUNITY FOR SOLUTION TO ENABLE SINGULAR FUTURE
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14. OUR VISION OF THE FUTURE
EVOLVING HLN TO A PROGRAMMABLE, CONSUMABLE CLOUD NETWORK
NETWORK APPLICATIONS
Virtualize
NETWORK SERVICES CONTROL
Software
IP INFRASTRUCTURE
Define
MASSIVE PARADIGM SHIFT FROM CLOSED, STATIC CONFIGURATION TO OPEN, DYNAMIC ADAPTATION
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15. EVOLUTION OF NETWORK FUNCTIONS VIRTUALIZATION
AUTO-X (ONBOARDING, SCALING, NETWORKING)
Traditional and Applications Applications Application Network
Cloud-aware Aware
Applications Applications
cPaaS
OpenStack+ Nuage API
CloudBand Nuage Virtualized
Automated Management System Services Platform Automated, adaptive,
onboarding, application-specific
orchestration and DC (and WAN)
placement of networking, based on
Compute and Cloudstack
dynamic policy pull
BGP Federated
Storage resources vStorage VMs vSwitches Control Plane
L2/L3 IP/MPLS
VPN Services
Cloudnodes
Nuage DC
Network
MASSIVE PARADIGM SHIFT FROM CLOSED, STATIC CONFIGURATION TO OPEN, DYNAMIC ADAPTATION
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16. VIRTUALIZING AND SOFTWARE-DEFINING THE FUTURE NETWORK
INTERPRET
VIRTUALIZED, SOFTWARE- VIRTUALIZED, SOFTWARE-
DEFINED OPTICAL DEFINED CPE
NETWORKING Network OS
Local Regional National Public
ANTICIPATEData Center Data Center Data Center Cloud
Access Metro Core
ADAPT
VIRTUALIZED, SOFTWARE- VIRTUALIZED, SOFTWARE-
DEFINED WIRELESS DEFINED COMMUNICATIONS
NETWORKING
PERSONALIZED, DYNAMIC, PROGRAMMABLE NETWORKING
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17. VIRTUALIZED, SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING (1/2)
Virtualized CPE Dynamic Optical Capacity
Dynamic, low cost/complexity Home Networking Dynamic, high BW, low-latency Enterprise Networking
• Simple ‘Media Converter’ CPE, with infinite flexibility • Automated turn-up, scaling, rearrangement of bandwidth
• Application chaining links vCPE functions based on user, across optical network
device, app • Rapidly recover from site, node, and link failures
• Network dynamically steers traffic to vCPE functions • Automated multi-layer optimization
CloudNode
SDN NFV SDN NFV
TOR Enterprise
Camera flow critical flow
Video Opt detected
detected Enterprise optical
Parental Ctrl DHCP capacity dynamically
Traffic Mgmt boosted
Virtual CPE IPv4/IPv6
Simple Steer traffic to right Metro Service
Access BNG Enterprise
CPE Service Chain Aggregation
Node (w/vCPE) Branch Provider DC
Node
OPTIMIZED NETWORKING WITH OPTIMUM ECONOMICS
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18. VIRTUALIZED, SOFTWARE-DEFINED WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS
Dynamic Wireless Capacity Dynamic Communications
Dynamic, lowest cost Wireless Networking Dynamic, lowest cost Comms Networking
• Slice spectrum for optimal multicast/unicast per cell, • Network applications with dynamic web scale and
per location, per time of day virtual instances per app
• Optimized delivery using all available capacity • Pay as you grow, transaction-based web comms
dimensions services
Dynamically
SDN Control eMBMS NFV SDN NFV
vs. unicast
Create
partition vCDN Create vIMS
eMBMS slice
instance for
app
eMBMS GW
WebRTC Provider
vIMS
GW IMS
eNB
Dynamically create
Dynamically
ePC and connect
Smartload using
WebRTC GW
off-peak capacity
DYNAMICALLY OPTIMIZED SPECTRUM SLICING AND COMMUNICATIONS
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19. SUMMARY PERSPECTIVE
• NFV will greatly enhance the ability of ‘network applications’ to elastically scale to
meet changing demand patterns:
- Changing demand by unpredictable usage of operator own applications (above ‘peak’ loads for special events)
- Changing demand by unpredictable usage by web applications accessing operator network apps
• NFV and SDN also create new value propositions
- Slicing to create individual, deterministic, automated and optimized DC and WAN networks
- Simplification of CPE but with infinite functionality (and lifetime)
- Simplification of operations (provisioning, management, on-boarding)
- Flexibility to roll out innovative applications quickly and with low risk (new revenue opportunities)
 Value is not always about CapEx or TCO savings
• But significant challenges remain to realize full value
WE ARE LEADING THE WAY TO CREATE THIS NEW VIRTUAL REALITY
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20. To learn more about Alcatel-Lucent Cloud, visit us at
our website or at one of our social media platforms.
www.alcatel-lucent.com/solutions/cloud