Virtualising the BSS Stack

VIRTUALISING THE BSS STACK

Andrew Keene, Director of Product Management, Openet

Stephen O’Loughlin, Charging Solutions Manager, Openet

17 October 2014

2w w w . o p e n e t . c o m© Copy right 2014 Openet

Part 1 – V is for

Virtualisation

Part 2 –Realities of

NFV

Part 3 –Trends and Directions

3© Copyright 2014 Openet – Company Confidential For Use Under Non-Disclosure Only

The world of computing has gone through rapid changes in recent years


This has lead to great improvements in how software is created, deployed, managed and used but how does this relate to mobile networks?


Virtualization to the Rescue


Virtualization and NFV have the potential to revolutionise how networks are built and managed


VIRTUALISATION, CLOUD & NFV PROMISES

• Reduce management and equipment costs

• Decrease overall complexity

• Increase scalability

• Promote the use of multi-tenancy

• Enable new services and ability to trial new business models

• Promote openness and therefore reduce vendor lock in

• Reduce deployment times of new applications

• Allow trialling and rapid deployment of new business models


• Virtualization: create a virtual version of a computing resource

• Removes one-to-one dependency of BSS software on specific hardware

• Easier creation, scaling and management of instances of BSS solutions

• NFV (Network Functions Virtualization): initiative by operators (2012) • Virtualization technology

• Consolidate network equipment onto industry standard high volume hardware

• Network functions in software

• Extending virtualization/NFV to BSS

• Accelerate service innovation

• Learn fast and minimize risk

• Facilitate new business models

• Optimize costs

KEY BENEFITS OF BSS VIRTUALIZATION


• Operators will be “using virtualization to drive innovative service creation, especially the creation of services and apps that require time to market intervals of only days, even hours.”

• “Many operators view NFV as a key ingredient in their OSS/BSS transformation objectives, offering an escape from the legacy 12-24 month service creation cycles that handicap their long-term competitiveness”

Source: 2014 OSS/BSS Investment Trends: Top Operator Drivers and Priorities, Current Analysis

BUSINESS DRIVERS FOR BSS VIRTUALIZATION


• Virtualization: Simplifies and accelerate service deployment process

• Easier to deploy and manage software/BSS

• No need to create a full new hardware based environment for each service introduction, with full procure-design-integrate-test-deploy cycle

• No separate test environment

• Test and launch on the same infrastructure

• Test to scale production reduced from weeks to hours

• Services can be rapidly scaled up or down

• Rapidly deploy targeted services based on geography or customer sets

BENEFIT 1: ACCELERATE SERVICE INNOVATION


• Test new services with minimum risk/disruption (73.4% operators)

• Easy to roll out or roll back services

• Resources can easily be re-allocated

• Easy to go from small scale trial to full scale production

• In-service upgrades and modifications: faster, minimum disruption

• Adoption of open standards with BSS software and NFV

• Removes vendor lock-in and reduce needs for vendor specific skills

• Simplifies integration of new components to the existing network

BENEFIT 2: LEARN FAST AND MINIMIZE RISKS


• Reduce hardware costs

• Consolidate hardware

• Standard hardware instead of proprietary

• Simplified, faster deployment process

• Optimize hardware utilization

• Multiple applications can co-exist on the same physical server

• Hardware does no longer need to be permanently dedicated to a specific application or purpose

• Hardware only needed for occasional peak load can be re-allocated during off peak periods

BENEFIT 3: OPTIMIZE COSTS (OPEX & CAPEX)


• Potentially complex migration path from current network to all virtualized network

• Performance impacts of virtualization

• More of an issue for data-plane nodes

• Lack of virtualization expertise in many vendors

• Achieving required levels of reliability on industry standard hardware which may require mobile operators embracing different reliability/failover mechanisms

• Disparate community who must produce common management and orchestration layers

• Increased benefits of NFV occur when the entire network is created in an NFV manner; something that will take some time

NFV – CHALLENGES FOR OPERATORS


Policy & ChargingVirtualization

Management of StatefulSession Data

Storage MechanismOrchestration

Management

Deployment Mechanism

Upgrades

Scalability

Performance

HypervisorsHigh AvailabilityRouting/Load

Balancing


Logical Scalable Units Data and Storage

Management& Orchestration

Routing


PROTECT LEGACY BSS INVESTMENT

• Mobile operators want to protect legacy BSS investments made over many years

• Operators want to squeeze the last drop of ROI out of legacy BSS investments

• This approach can be to the detriment of project timelines and stymie real innovation


• Rigid mobile operator processes beget rigid BSS systems

• Agility needs to be more than a buzzword to enable new business models

• Single supplier strategies ≠ Agility

• Mobile operators persist with NEM’s in spite of a lack of domain expertise that a specialist BSS vendor can bring

SINGLE SUPPLIER STRATEGIES SHRINKING


BSS TRANSFORMATION AND VIRTUALIZATION


In September 2013, AT&T launched the next generation of its Supplier Domain Program – Domain 2.0 –triggering a swift and broad move to a modern, cloud-based architecture.

AT&T plans to simplify and scale its network by:

• Separating hardware and software functionality;

• Separating network control plane and forwarding planes; and

• Improving management of functionality in the software layer.

VIRTUALIZATION IN ACTION: AT&T’S DOMAIN 2.0


FUTURE NETWORK VISION: PATH OF ADOPTION

Time

THANK YOU

Technology

Virtualising the BSS Stack