VMware, Inc. announced VMware vCloud NFV-OpenStack Edition 3.0, the next generation of the company’s production-proven network functions virtualization (NFV) platform for communications service providers (CSPs). This update from VMware will enable breakthrough improvements in network performance, new carrier-grade networking capabilities, and intent-based service assurance to help improve the total economics of software-defined, open standards-based 5G and multi-cloud telco networks.
“Malaysia had an internet penetration rate of 85.7 percent as of 2017, where 97.7 percent of users preferred accessing the internet with mobile devices. We expect the push for 5G adoption to happen in the near future and in order for that to materialise, a new approach to the telco network and cloud is required to solve challenges associated with the hyper distribution of virtual network functions, applications and data,” said Sanjay K. Deshmukh, Vice President and Managing Director, South East Asia and Korea, VMware.
“With VMware vCloud NFV-OpenStack 3.0, service providers will be able to build software-defined, programmable, highly-distributed Telco clouds based on open standards to deliver new advanced services to consumers, and quality-of-service-based network slices to serve the application needs for a wide variety of industries,” he added.
VMware vCloud NFV delivers a 5G-ready NFV infrastructure platform, tuned to support rapid rollout of next-generation services with low latency and high network throughput, and support for a massively distributed set of end points and devices. VMware vCloud NFV enables Cloud Service Providers in the country to create an end-to-end software-based network architecture to deliver consistent, pervasive connectivity and intrinsic security to applications and network functions wherever they are located, at global scale from core to cloud to edge, and independent of underlying physical infrastructure or location.
“Service providers are being pressed to deliver new and differentiated services faster, in an on-demand model, and maintain a high quality of experience for the user,” said Emily Ng, Regional Sales Director, VMware. “This requires a new architecture for network functions virtualization, while creating a delivery method that will support an all-IP infrastructure.”
Key advancements in the newest release of vCloud NFV-OpenStack 3.0 will include:
- Accelerated Performance: VMware vCloud NFV-OpenStack delivers accelerated data plane network performance, which can dramatically increase efficiency, while preserving all the existing benefits of VMware’s NFV infrastructure. VMware’s advanced networking architecture delivered through new high-performance switching, enhanced platform awareness, and more secure multi-tenancy, is transparent to virtual network functions (VNF) providers, and delivers kernel-based security, deterministic resource allocation, linear scalability, and consistent multi-flow performance. Beta tests by customers such as NTT Com, Telia Company, and Telefonica of the new NSX Managed Virtual Distributed Switch in
- Enhanced Data Path mode have shown network performance improvements of 3-5x depending on packet size.
- Carrier-Grade Networking: VMware vCloud NFV-OpenStack 3.0 will deliver a range of new carrier-oriented networking capabilities and enable the extension of the Virtual Cloud Network to CSPs. The platform will deliver:
- Increased network resiliency through fast link failure detection and bare-metal edge networking support with extended security, performance, and policy management.
- Network slicing using micro-segmentation enabling CSPs with the flexibility to allocate QoS, security, availability, and other policies in a virtual network slice that can be delivered to support different business segments.
- Native support for the Container Networking Interface for container-based workloads and microservices.
- Multi-cloud networking and security enabling operational control and visibility into heterogeneous environments spanning data centers, public and telco clouds and edge environments.
- Intent-Based Service Assurance: With intent-based assurance CSPs in the country can define operational and business intent for the network, and continuously verify performance against the defined intent through Day 0, Day 1 and Day 2 operations. New capabilities include service onboarding and operations; capacity planning, forecasting and reclamation; advanced issue isolation and remediation; and dynamic performance optimization.
Advancing Support for Open Standards – OpenStack, ONAP and OSM
VMware vCloud NFV-OpenStack 3.0 will add VMware Integrated OpenStack 5-Carrier Edition, (one of the first commercial OpenStack distributions) to comply with the OpenStack Foundation’s 2018.02 interoperability guidelines.
Improved Economics for Communications Service Provider Networks
VMware vCloud NFV can deliver a demonstrable impact on the total economics of digital transformation for CSPs. As networks evolve to deliver new revenue streams from 5G and telco cloud services, VMware enables enhanced economic value through:
- Accelerated Time To Revenue: accelerated time to revenue of new consumer and enterprise services through common NFV infrastructure and operations platform.
- Lower Total Infrastructure Costs: lower overall network infrastructure costs and ongoing power, cooling and rack space required through new DPDK-based networking; reduce or eliminate networking and security infrastructure costs through inclusion of distributed firewalling and load balancing; unify Telco and IT cloud infrastructure to help maximize return from capital and operational expenditure in equipment, tooling and training.
- Optimized Operations: increased network efficiencies and reduced operational costs through predictive analytics that can project future requirements and automatically balance workloads to optimize network performance; efficient operations and increased cost savings through a real-time predictive capacity analytics engine that proactively detects capacity risks, automates resource reclamation, and right sizes resources; superior QoS and lower customer churn through intelligent remediation capabilities that can predict, prevent, and troubleshoot faster.
- Superior TCO for OpenStack NFV: 45 percent lower total OpEx for OpenStack over a five-year period versus leading alternative; 83 percent lower total hardware and software CapEx versus competitive alternative; support for 33 percent more subscribers in the same period of time and using the same amount of money as would be possible to activate using the competitive solution. All results based on TCO study by ACG Research .