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Hunt, Glen | July 06, 2016

J Summary

IssueNetwork function virtualization (NFV) is considered by operators and vendors alike to be the most important transformation that the networking industry has undertaken in its history. NFV promises to provide operators with the ability to deliver increased service revenues, automate many if not all network functions, reduce the cost of the underlying infrastructure needed to support new services and provide the scale needed to meet exploding traffic demands. The next generation service delivery architecture requires and effective network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) that can support the unique needs of virtual network functions (VNFs) and new services, with carrier-grade attributes such as performance, reliability and elastic scaling. The following reference architecture diagram outlines the key building blocks that must work in concert to support carrier-grade virtualized network services. This report, one of three, will focus on NFVI which includes: the virtualization layer (virtual compute, storage and networking) and the virtualized infrastructure manger (VIM) layers needed to support virtual network functions (VNFs).

ETSI NFV Reference Architecture:

NFV Infrastructure: Competitive Dynamics and Solution AssessmentsAdvisory Report

Glen Hunt Current Analysis Principal Analyst, Transport and Routing Infrastructure

NFV management and orchestration (MANO) and software defined network (SDN) controllers are addressed in separate reports.

For MANO Solutions: (please see NVF MANO: NFV MANO: Competitive Dynamics and Solution Assessments , June 30, 2016).

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J NFVI: Defining the Market

Our analysis indicates that NFV infrastructure solutions have progressed over the past 24 months, to the level that operators are now transitioning from the proof of concept (PoC) stage and are now beginning to address the practicalities and challenges of launching commercial services.

J NFVI: Assessing the Market

The following criteria has been compiled to address the key capabilities and attributes that operators have indicated, and vendors have implemented, which are important when selecting an NFVI to support their business and network needs. Since the NFVI is the platform that services the needs of VNFs by applying the appropriate network resources, it must not only apply the raw storage, compute and network resources, but will also need to include end-to-end management. Vendor-supplied professional services and a broad ecosystem of third party capabilities; however, is needed in order to meet service provider requirements. Flexibility, the hallmark of virtualization, is also critical since new service requirements with unique needs continue to emerge.

Before assessing solutions or products Current Analysis has identified key factors to consider when procuring NFVI solutions to support the rollout of NFV-based services. These criteria, listed below and defined more rigorously in a later section, have been used to assess the various major vendor solutions available today.

•Solution Portfolio Breadth•Carrier-Grade – Availability, Performance, Resiliency•Management Tools and Utilities•Performance and Scale Requirements•Network Services Provided•SDN Controllers Supported•Professional Services Offered•Customer Momentum•Ecosystem Breadth•Solution Status

Key Takeaways•NFVI solutions have made rapid progress over the past year, and variants of Linux, OpenStack and KVM

permeate all solutions; solution differentiation will need to move beyond just open source.•The ETSI NFV architecture has been the over-arching guide for vendor solutions, the latitude provided

in the architecture has afforded vendors an opportunity to innovate and make practical implementation trade-offs, such as combining NFVI and VIM.

•All compared vendors have strong platforms and portfolios, and leverage open source software as their foundational technologies, but then add carrier-grade features to provide end-to-end support, such as OAM and automation.

•Functional differentiation between the platforms is currently challenging, it will take deployment experience and performance validation to determine market leaders, but all appear to have early market traction.

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J Perspective

Current Perspective

Summary:As indicated above, any practical NFVI assessment begins by identifying the major factors that will drive the procurement process, and the specific criteria on which they will base a purchase decision. Each criterion is assessed using a combination of vendor-supplied responses to metrics requests from Current Analysis compiled during June 2016. This report does not include all vendors that offer carrier-grade NFVI solutions, but attempts to provide analysis of several leading offers and highlight common trends. Additional vendor solutions will be added in subsequent updates to the NFVI report.

NFVI: Buying CriteriaThis section provides a high level description of the buying criteria used to compare the various NFVI solutions.

•Solution Portfolio: A vendor’s NFVI solution is initially assessed in ETSI architectural terms, but further functional decomposition is needed beyond what ETSI has specified, and is reflected in how vendors are packaging their solutions. For example, the packaging of most NFVI solutions includes support for VIM functions as described in the ETSI architecture. The vendor’s NFVI portfolio is an indicator of its ability to support the needs of a broad range of VNFs and services.

•Carrier-Grade – Availability, Performance, Resiliency: The NFVI must provide the same level of support in virtual network environments as what is expected, and for the most part, delivered by physical network infrastructures – essentially five nines availability. This includes features such as redundancy, recovery from failures, the ability to monitor performance, perform troubleshooting and input to network analytics.

•Management Tools and Utilities: Effective management of the NFVI platform’s hardware and software components is mandatory in order for operators to deliver the expected quality of service. Typical management functions include the ability to install VNFs (VNF onboarding), provide operations and maintenance functions (OAM), and provide full life-cycle support for software. The NFVI also needs to support OSS integration via APIs. The application of software defined networking (SDN) is also key to providing centralized policy and optimization of infrastructure resources.

•Performance and Scale Requirements: The NFVI platform supplies the resources needed to support the various VNF workloads. This includes the ability to scale out (add) as workload requirements increase and scale-in (reduce) as workload requirements decrease. Key metrics for performance include:a. The platform must be able to deliver application-aware services, and apply resources appropriately to satisfy to the needs of the application (i.e., latency, bandwidth, availability, compute and storage). b. VNFs may need or benefit from availability of specialized hardware support (such as a hardware accelerator line card); examples include compute-intensive functions such as deep packet inspection (DPI), data encryption or low latency video encoding. c. Support can be provided by commercial off-theshelf (COTS) servers; however, many vendors offer hardware acceleration to provide optimized data path or signaling path support. d. The platform must have the ability to apply multiple processes to a particular service is referred to as “service chaining” or “functional chaining” (e.g., L4-7 like firewalls, network address translation [NAT], intrusion protection) and is a key operator requirement. The NFVI itself can provide basic service chaining, but optimized service chaining is most often handled by the orchestration layer through SDN control.

•Networking Services: The NFVI platform provides the resources needed by a VNF, which necessarily include compute, storage or network connectivity. The platform must be agnostic, open and flexible without limitation to the kinds of services running and the access media used for connectivity (Internet,

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data center interconnect and WAN).•SDN Controller Support: All of the NFVIs compared in this report are based on OpenStack and therefore

leverage technologies and innovations provided via the open source community. The SDN controllers leverage the OpenDayLight (ODL), Open Network Operating System (ONOS), or vendor-specific technologies which expose north and southbound APIs for use by a higher-level SDN controller.

•Professional Services Offered: The primary goal of NFV is to equip service providers and large enterprises with the ability to rapidly create and deliver new services and applications (VNFs) or to improve the efficiency of delivering existing services. In order to accelerate the transformation from current deployment models to a more agile virtual service delivery model, operators use vendorprovided professional services to accelerate adoption. The professional services needed span the full service life-cycle.

•Customer Momentum: Customer momentum is a solid indicator of the progress being made in the network virtualization process. Early technology trials and PoCs are beginning to make their way into true commercial deployments. The deployment announcements and new service offerings being announced by operators provides a barometer for where the industry is on the continuum toward broad adoption of network virtualization. Operators see virtualization as a means to differentiate themselves from their peers, or as a way to compete directly with Web-scale players that exploit their fundamental service layer provide, or to improve overall network efficiency and agility.

•Ecosystem: A single vendor or operator cannot complete the virtualization transformation alone, therefore, an ecosystem of technology, business and application partners is critical to success. The open source community has injected and continues to inject new innovations that expands the technology base for all to leverage. However, new use cases can spawn new requirements that must be addressed, such as low latency, high number of devices or unpredictable device behavior.

•Solution Status: The release status of the NFVI is a key metric for operators, because it carries with it an indication of the solution’s deployability and market readiness. Currently, most solutions have reached (nearly reached) “generally available” (GA) status, some have moved beyond their initial releases and are well on the way to fulfilling their on-going product roadmaps. Multiple vendors have engaged third-party testing organizations to further prove to operators that their solutions are ready for deployment. Organizations commonly leveraged for independent product validation are the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC), the Tolley Group, QualiTest, OPNFV, the Metro Ethernet Forum and The New IP Agency (NIA), as well as test and measurement partners such as Spirent.

NFVI: Competitive Solutions and PerformanceThe following table provides an overview of some of the leading vendor supplied NFVIs, who have provided Current Analysis with sufficient detail to be included in the analysis; additional vendor solutions will be included in subsequent updates. Readers should note that the exclusion of a vendor in this report cycle, does not necessarily indicate the lack of a compelling NFVI solution.

Table A: Solution Architecture and Carrier Grade AttributesTable A. describes the platform software used and the carrier-grade features offered by the various NFVI solutions. In general all solutions leverage open source Linux, OpenStack and KVM software, but most vendors add extensions to achieve the performance, reliability and resilience and management interfaces needed to support a carrier environment or leverage one of the popular OpenStack commercial distributions which includes software support. All vendors have taken carrier-grade seriously, subsequent updated to this report will include additional granularity regarding these metrics.

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Note: Performance metrics have been color-coded to highlight comparatively strong (green), average (yellow), and weak (red). Metrics in grey are those which cannot easily be compared.

Table B: Management Tools and CapabilitiesTable B. describes the platform management capabilities and tools supported to enable operators support the full software and hardware life-cycles. OAM support is critical for service providers to maintain the health of the system and to determine the cause of faults and track performance. All vendors have taken management tools seriously, subsequent updated to this report will include additional granularity regarding these metrics, for further analysis of OSS integration and VNF on-boarding please refer to MANO report noted at the beginning of this report.

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Table C. Market Momentum, Partners and Release StatusTable C describes the market momentum and ecosystem partners reported by the vendors. Market momentum included reported live deployments, active PoCs and trials. Active engagement with multiple customers is a potential indicator of the platform’s success in the market; however, the market is nascent and early traction does not guarantee longer term success. Vendors are in different stages with the development of their platforms; all products listed have been deemed generally available, but some are in their first release, while others are beyond initial GA status. Vendors will begin focusing more on deployments in the coming period and less on PoCs and trials, given the maturity of their solutions.

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Table D. Performance and ScaleTable D describes the performance and scaling capabilities of the NFVI platforms evaluated. Performance and scale are difficult to compare given the lack of operational data; however, the metrics outlined clearly show that carrier-grade performance is required as well as elastic scaling in order to optimize the platform to match expected use cases.

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Table E. Professional ServicesTable E describes the suite of professional services offered by the NFVI vendors. Professional services assist the service providers to more rapidly design and deploy virtualized network services leveraging the NFVI platform and related functionality. Professional services vary per vendor and operator engagement and are listed but not evaluated.

NFVI: Competitive Positioning and AssessmentThe following section will provide a general assessment and ranking of each vendor’s NFVI solution. Rankings range from Competitive, Strong, Very Strong or Leader.

ADVA Optical Networking:

ADVA’s Ensemble Connector supports deployment of services at the customer premise, central office or from a cloud data center. Its solutions can deliver carrier-grade performance over low cost commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers, which has been validated via EANTC’s NFV performance and service chain testing. ADVA also stresses ease of implementation, touting that Ensemble Connector automatically places a “call home” to retrieve all relevant information needed to deliver services, without the need for a truck roll. Ensemble Connector was launched in December 2015 and has been deployed at Masergy and DartPoints. ADVA also offers its ProVMe and ProVMi solutions for vCPE applications such as CE 2.0 and premise-based VNF hosting, respectively. ADVA needs to ensure it remains top of mind with Tier 2 and Tier 3 service providers by stressing its ease of implementation, while its competitors are focused on the larger operators.

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Cisco:

Cisco’s NFVI infrastructure is an open platform to facilitate the transformation to a fully virtualized infrastructure. NFVI is ETSI compliant, pre-integrated (to reduce the TCO), and delivers carrier-grade, predictable performance with high availability and reliability to meet customer SLAs. The solution also offers a single user interface to manage the various configurations of the system and all equipment (including third-party) VNFs and components. The solution is integrated with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL OSP), OpenStack Platform 7 or VMWare and runs on Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS). The solution has been validated by EANTC and the New IP Agency. Announced customers include Vodacom South Africa, and the vendor notes that it is engaged with 10+ PoCs and trials. Professional services include VNF integration and support for all vendor products deployed as part of the solution. The solution is now generally available, as of July 2016, and the major components of the solution were released earlier. Cisco needs to provide additional visibility for its NFVI offering in live operations and demonstrate its openness by supporting third-party hardware platforms to bolster the competitive advantages reflected in its strong product and technology attributes.

Ericsson:

Ericsson’s Cloud Execution Environment (CEE) is very strong, and the company’s offering is well placed to help carriers virtualize their networks. Ericsson leverages carrier-grade Linux and OpenStack and OpenDayLight (ODL) as the basis for the solution. To address a broad range of scaling requirements, Ericsson offers the high scale HDS 8000 and the BSP 8100, which leverage the Ericsson Cloud Manager, Ericsson Command Center and Ericsson Cloud SDN for WAN connectivity. Ericsson reports that CEE is live in seven deployments, including DOCOMO, Softbank and Digicel who are running a vEPC application, and a European operator running the Mobile Proxy application (others confidential). The BSP 8100 has been ordered by 150 customers and has 21 operators running the product in live operation. The company also notes that it has engaged in 50+ operator PoCs. Ericsson needs to promote its ECC as a multi-vendor platform to avoid being portrayed as a platform for Ericsson-centric mobile networks.

HPE:

HPE’s OpenNFV is the leader among this comparison of NFVI offerings based on its leadership in the open source community in areas such as HPE’s OpenNFV Reference Architecture (a suit of NFV products & services), hardening Linux, Helion OpenStack Carrier Grade (HCG), contributions to OpenStack, the OpenDayLight-based (ODL) carrier SDN fabric, and ContexNet, which address service provider requirements, for control, network overlay support and application-aware features. HPE OpenNFV has been adopted by multiple telecom vendors and service providers to host their infrastructures, giving it very high visibility in the market. HPE’s OpenNFV vendor ecosystem, VNF onboarding, validation and certification programs position it well when viewed from an end-to-end perspective. Named operators and customers include Swisscom, Nokia and Comcast, and four additional live HPE OpenNFV customers. HPE also notes over 100 customers (unannounced) are live with its various network virtualization solutions. HPE OpenNFV is often embedded in a vendor or operator end-to-end solution, which tends to limit a portion of HPE’s market visibility.

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Nokia:

Nokia’s CloudBand Infrastructure Software (CBIS) solution is very strong among this comparison, based on the solution’s predecessor product, CloudBand Node, having been deployed in 12 commercial networks. CBIS includes all of the features and capabilities of CloudBand Node and is strengthened with Nokia’s Network Director to improve service and resource orchestration including. The strong use of OpenStack and clearly defined functional decomposition enables operators to mix and match various layers of the ETSI NFV architecture from multiple vendors, thereby providing a robust multi-vendor infrastructure. CBIS, which will be released H2 2016 (July), Cloudband has been generally available.

ZTE:

ZTE’s NFVI offering, Cloud UniCore Infrastructure - Telecom Universal Integrated Elastic Cloud System (TECS), has become more visible to the wider market with the vendor now claiming 36+ deployments with operators such as VimpelCom, Velcom (Belarus) and China Mobile. The vendor also notes 60+ PoC engagements with global operators. ZTE is also partnered with suppliers such as HPE, H3C, IBM, WindRiver, Radisys, Oracle, Dell, VMware, Red Hat and Suse, which gives it the ability to leverage multiple solution components to satisfy specific operator preferences and requirements. TECS offers has a full suite of carrier-grade attributes, but is not significantly differentiated from leading competitors. ZTE must demonstrate to the market that its offering is capable of delivering competitive advantages over and above its rivals (e.g., efficient resource utilization) and converting its many PoCs into commercial deployments. The vendor also refers to the system as the Tulip Elastic Cloud System, where “Tulip” equals “Telecom Universal Integrated.”

NFVI: Looking ForwardThe results of this first solution level assessment of vendor’ NFVI offerings highlights the ongoing contest between vendors who vie to dominate the NFV infrastructure space. Initial vendor rankings are relatively evenly distributed, since the products understandingly lack detailed performance metrics, and are still rather nascent. Many factors which will shape the market over the next year, not least the impact of the multiple on-going open source NFVI oriented initiatives. In subsequent assessments, we will be looking for the ways in which vendors are handling the open source issue together with progress toward differentiating their solutions and demonstrating success with live deployments of NFV-based service rollouts.

J Recommended Actions

Vendor Actions•Ericsson needs to promote its BSP 8100-based solution separately from its mobile infrastructure

messaging, since operators can effectively leverage the platform to modernize their telco central offices. As projects such as “CORD” continue their journey through the ONS and gain additional operator interest, the ECC could bring a complete carrier-grade solution capable of providing the underlying infrastructure. Ericsson should also needs to consider explicit support for ONOS to reduce any perceived barrier to entry.

•Cisco should continue to demonstrate progress with its NFVI solution now that the general availability date of Q3 2016 is achieved, and that it can show additional customer momentum beyond Vodacom South Africa. Cisco has been a leading contributor to the virtualization efforts, but the visibility of its NFVI platform lags that of its competitors and has perhaps been overshadowed by its end-toend service

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delivery messaging.•HPE needs to continue to provide leadership and position its Helium Carrier Grade (HCG) distributions

as best-in-class options for telco vendors and operators implementing their own end-to-end virtualized infrastructures (NFVI, MANO, OSS/BSS, etc.). HPE should also consider adding ONOS and XOS support to position better to participate in the CORD initiative.

•ZTE’s support of multiple technical partners positions it as somewhat agnostic to the underlying hardware (HPE, DELL), and software (OpenStack, VMWare, Oracle). ZTE needs to convert its many PoCs and trials into commercial deployments that use one or more of these alternative technologies (distributions) in a service provider solution.

•ADVA, the smallest vendor covered in this report, should demonstrate interoperability with one or more of the larger players via its Ensemble software suite. It should consider leveraging the growing interest in the vCPE market space and partner with vendors that lack a purpose-built CPE device that can deliver the flexibility and performance of hosting VNFs on the customer premise on its ProVMe/ProVMi platforms.

•Nokia has demonstrated rapid progress in combining the assets gained from the Alcatel-Lucent acquisition and charting next steps in its product story by leveraging the “best” technology from each company. The migration to the new CloudBand Infrastructure Software is a prime example where the company has leveraged existing customer momentum (i.e., CloudBand) and then move to establish a new more comprehensive solution. The challenge will be in retaining existing CloudBand customers while demonstrating commercial success in attracting new operators based on expanded capabilities of CBIS, such as analytics and continued investment in open source to promote its status as an industry innovator.

User Actions•Operators should consider how to best align their NFVI, MANO and SDN architectures according to

which software distributions they prefer. Operators should press their suppliers to demonstrate the level of interoperability and performance gained with a mixture of Linux and OpenStack distributions at various layers of their network.

•Operators should evaluate their potential NFVI vendors based on how well their solutions address carrier-grade requirements. Although all solutions begin with OpenStack, carrier-grade variants are necessary in order for service providers to deliver high services which meet demanding customer expectations. Vendors who have aggressively addressed these capabilities early on could be preferred to those who purely rely on the open source community to weave carrier-grade capabilities into their platforms.

•Operators evaluating NFVI solutions should also consider the emerging requirements to support IoT devices, since the overall traffic profiles will change dramatically from those of traditional telco services. IoT traffic brings even greater uncertainty, and operators will need platforms that more efficiently handle peak workloads, which perhaps demand high performance, extremely low latency, or that appear and disappear periodically.

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NFV Infrastructure: Competitive Dynamics and Solution … · Network function virtualization ... 1 41 14 83 15. Or visit our Web site: 2 J NFVI: Defining the Market ... providing