Tom Nolle President of CIMI Corp, member of the NFV ISG, and Chief Architect of CloudNFV provides a tutorial on Network Functions Virtualization

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A Short Guide to Network
Functions Virtualization
Presented by Tom Nolle
President CIMI Corp
Am I here yet?

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What NFV Really Is
• It’s an operator-driven industry
specification process operating under
ETSI not a standards body
• It’s open to any company at no charge (but
there is a charge to attend meetings)
• It’s not a “forum” filled with cheerleaders
but a body doing serious work on creating
a model for the next-generation network

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The Goal in a Nutshell
Source: “Network Functions Virtualization: An Introduction, Enablers, Benefits, Challenges, & Call for Action”, ETSI NFV ISG

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Think “Network Functions
Virtualization” in Segments!
“Functions
Virtualization”
The logic that does
the deployment
“Operationalization”
The way we keep things
running and billable
“Network
Functions”
The logic we
deploy to build
services

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Basic Architecture
A set of repositories that hold an inventory of “Virtual
Network Functions” that will be deployed to create features
of network services now created by boxes
NFV Orchestration, the process
of creating instances of virtual
functions to meet service
requirements
NFV Infrastructure, the servers, switches, storage, networks and other stuff
that NFV runs on/in
There are data flows
among these
functional elements
as we move from
defining, to creating,
to managing a
service
NFV Management, the process
of lifecycle management of the
components and services

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Key Challenges
• Defining an open process that embraces both
legacy and evolving (SDN, cloud) technology
• Getting a complete inventory of Virtual Network
Functions to deploy
• Finding a management paradigm that will insure
operations cost increases don’t overwhelm
capital cost savings
• Preparing to transition from being cost-driven to
being opportunity-driven

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Where Are We?
Fall 2012 – Call for Action Issued
January 2013 – First official ISG Meeting
July 2013 – Proof of Concept Call
Fall 2013 – PoC Demonstrations Begin
January 2015 – Official Final Results
We’re at the critical point where early/prototype
implementations will begin to feed back insights into
the process and also prepare the market for
adoption

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What’s Next?
• Companies are already announcing NFV-related
products/architectures
• Most early activity is likely to focus on
developing hostable Network Virtual Functions
• There are about 7 implementations of actual
NFV logic at some stage of development, two of
which are “public”
• Many more examples will come in the fall of
2013 and beyond

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To get involved in NFV you can:
• Join the ETSI ISG (companies only)
• Join a developer program offered by an NFV platform vendor
• Follow blogs (like mine; http://blog.cimicorp.com/)
Beware of Early Hype!
• Most people who are commenting on NFV aren’t involved in
any way with the process and many aren’t even talking with
those who are!
• Network operators are determined to make this work, more so
than in any past activity I’ve been involved in!
The Impact Could be Huge!
• NFV could be the largest source of new data centers, influence
three-quarters of all network purchases by operators, and drive
a major change in vendor market share (and that is NOT hype!)