 | Issue: | Latin America 2015 |
| Article no.: | 5 | |
| Topic: | Real experiences over virtual networks – Network Function Virtualization from a user experience prism | |
| Author: | Sridhar Lanka | |
| Title: | VP, Technology & Engineering | |
| Organisation: | XIUS | |
| PDF size: | 209KB |
About author
Sridhar Lanka is VP, Technology & Engineering at XIUS. Besides being responsible for product management, he spearheads the technology team in delivering solutions based on market need and client requirements.
Identifying key markets, creating innovative solutions, delivering value through technology and commercializing the use of technology has always been Sridhar’s focus. His versatile experience across various geographies involving diverse clientele enables him to put his thoughts into action and ideas into products.
Sridhar has more than 16 years of experience in technology management spanning telecommunications, e-governance, manufacturing and e-commerce. He joined XIUS in 2004 and was managing solution architecture and consulting teams in his earlier role.
Sridhar Lanka holds a Master in Business Administration from Institute for Technology & Management and a Bachelor Degree from Osmania University, India.
Article abstract
Over the last two decades, unparalleled drive for service experience has indeed made life easier for all. A lesser realized fact is that it has also pushed the Information & Communications industry to reinvent itself. The late ’90s and early part of this century witnessed mobile operators make long drawn plans for network roll-outs and capacity expansion. In comparison, the last decade and going forward, it will take operators only a few weeks or months to do so.
Full Article
Technology – Making Life Easier
The human brain is more likely to remember experiences driven by principles of simplicity and the fulfilling nature of it. A person watching a movie on NetFlix enjoys the experience of it and does not necessarily comprehend the tools and technologies enabling it. The current generation experiences various services in daily life without the knowledge of complex infrastructure delivering them.
Over the last two decades, unparalleled drive for service experience has indeed made life easier for all. A lesser realized fact is that it has also pushed the Information & Communications industry to reinvent itself. The late ’90s and early part of this century witnessed mobile operators make long drawn plans for network roll-outs and capacity expansion. In comparison, the last decade and going forward, it will take operators only a few weeks or months to do so.
Reduced time to deploy, rapid capacity expansion, new services launch, economics driven by recession and lower return on investment contributed towards technology standardization. The economies of scale essentially bring down costs as well as enhance availability and integration. On one hand, while equipment became standardized and more open to integration, the need for abstraction complemented service and user experience.
Information Technology has often played a significant role in various aspects of daily life. The IT industry adapted quickly and to a large extent spearheaded most changes. While IT was going through this adaptation for service innovation and continuity, the Communications industry was struggling to meet the demands of data layer solutions.
Putting the Virtual Jigsaw Together
Infrastructure comprised of proprietary and optimized hardware, network integration & management framework, operating system, service logic and a storage device. Evolving technologies necessitated infrastructure to adapt and suit the ever-changing needs of time and hence ‘virtualization’ came into existence.
Initially, what started as server hardware virtualization paved the way to storage and later, network integration layer. Eventually, virtualization of end-to-end infrastructure was the need of the hour and is now managed, orchestrated by hyper visors, software, routing logic and service logic. The virtualization of physical and media layer from the data layer became essential.
Voice-based services (operating on media layer) was the prime end user service besides enabling infrastructure integration i.e. connectivity (on the network and media layer) that Communications initially offered.
As technology continued to evolve, voice went on to be second in preference to data. The advent of smart phones and supporting technologies as 3G, 4G LTE, WiMax resulted in greater demand for data services.
The neck breaking speed in innovation has led to launch of new services by the day, bringing about a need for multi-tenancy service applications using the same infrastructure. Each service application utilizes the infrastructure optimally, without adversely impacting other services.
This growth however, required deploying new infrastructure, improving connectivity and delivering impeccable services either by utilizing or enhancing the already connected infrastructure. Further, managing such infrastructure required tools and technologies that are simple yet, intelligent and configurable. This brought about the evolution of virtual infrastructure management and service orchestration layer.
We now have virtualized infrastructure, managed and reconfigured through software. Be it for launching a new service globally or for expanding storage, infrastructure and its management, is made possible in real time through virtualization. Soon, the need for service delivering infrastructure to network with other service infrastructure nodes was inevitable. This necessitated concurrent integration aggregation and integration abstraction.
NFV – Key to Delivering Enriched User Experience
Let us consider the example of a person watching a movie on YouTube. This simple and yet fulfilling experience of the user demands the need for reconfiguring the network topology from near real time download to uninterrupted streaming of the movie. It requires network elements to provide dedicated and optimized bandwidth.
To stream a movie, the network element requires a codec for transcoding the video and meets the security framework of the publisher. While the network element is reconfiguring itself for this session, it also has to download the codec, perform In-Service Software Upgrade and finally initiate movie streaming after digital rights are validated and publisher’s security framework is implemented.
Now, imagine if the user steps out of his home, takes a metro ride and continues watching the movie. The service application will now have to continue the session on a portable device with a dynamic session management capability, connect to a mobile or public broadband network, allocate required bandwidth, redefine network usage charging framework and provide seamless resumption of movie streaming.
The network functions reconfigure to provide the user an enriched experience. But to achieve this, they need to be virtualized, manageable, reconfigurable as well as highly reliable. This eliminates the approach of application specific hardware and brings to the forefront, Service Aware infrastructure.
Managing these complex and highly sophisticated tasks as a network element planner would need video buffering software, CDN, firewall, DPI, Radio Access Network node, WAN accelerators and signaling, packet gateways, charging gateway, policy function, payment gateway, all working in tandem and orchestrated to the instructions of the user or Service Application to provide an exhilarating movie streaming experience.
Today, a network planner of a CSP has an option of co-locating all these nodes on a single infrastructure or on an integrated distributed infrastructure. Hence, for Service Application all these virtualized network elements need to be orchestrated harmoniously to deliver the seamless user experience.
Experience Future, the NFV Way
The next phase of this revolution would be to deploy self-organizing and self-healing networks. Consider a Friday game of soccer in a stadium packed to maximum capacity. Imagine the capacity utilization mobile networks around this stadium undergo. A few hundred fans stream the game, a few hundreds more have video conversations with family and friends and there may be many others looking for their favorite player/team statistics. All these require enormous bandwidth, just for couple of hours.
If a network planner of a CSP has an option to create a network instance only for this stadium and reconfigures the topology to support higher bandwidth, the revenue potential it creates for a service provider is immense. This is where self-organizing networks come into play.
A network that understands the growing needs of a situation and reconfigures accordingly or implements additional instances of network equipment and enables dynamic pricing framework to achieve this demand is a Self Organizing Network (SON). Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Network (SDN) need to be in alignment to achieve efficient Self Organizing Networks.
Building Self Organizing Networks requires re-deployment of new age network function tools and technologies. But, predicting the needs of users as well as networks and reconfiguring networks to achieve higher revenues is definitely possible today. And this is exactly what XIUS AMPLIO specializes in.
Analyzing data from various sources, predicting usage and bandwidth demands, guiding network functions and network teams to reconfigure their elements to achieve better user satisfaction and revenue growth are this solution’s deliverables. XIUS AMPLIO is devised on an outcome based framework that guarantees enhanced user experience and higher revenue for Communication Service Providers (CSPs).
CSPs looking for tools and technologies for Network Function Virtualization may want to evaluate XIUS Mobile Services Platform. It has been widely deployed across the globe and meets the needs of the ‘always-on’ end user.
