Telecom Network Evolution in Last decade (2011-2020): Legacy to Network Cloudification

The Telecom Network space has changed immensely in the last decade and the journey towards network cloudification  has been definitely very interesting to watch with massive adoption globally in recent years.

Network Cloudification at a very high level is basically converting actual network functions(routers,firewall, Evolved Packet Core(EPC), IP Multimedia Subsystem(IMS),etc) into a software package and deploying them on a network cloud (public, private, hybrid,on premise) running using commercial IT servers.

Having been part of the Telecom industry for more than 9yrs, I have been fortunate to work on legacy setup as well as Telco NFV & Cloud environment during this tenure with focus on Telco technologies & use cases like 4G LTE, Voice Over LTE (VoLTE), virtualized enterprise offerings and 5G lately.

Starting in the industry back in 2011 I was introduced to the Legacy network setup having dedicated hardware for each Network Function by the vendors along with ecosystem of supporting network equipment, functions and necessary support by the same vendors. 

This scenario started to change around 2014-15 time frame when concept of Virtualization started getting adopted in Network Industry with introduction of NFV(Network Function Virtualization) and SDN (Software Defined Network).

The NFV architecture finalized by ETSI (European Telecommunication Standards Institute) and accepted globally is shown along with reference SDN Architecture.

NFV & SDN provided the service providers a path towards deploying Commercial Of The Shelf(COTS) x86 Servers; deploying multiple Virtualized Network Functions(VNFs) on these servers and scaling them based on workloads with minimum downtime; better managing their infrastructure utilization and moving away from vendor lockdown. Also with VNFs the operators had an opportunity of moving the software element of network functions & its operations to the cloud which provided them the flexibility with respect to implementation & management.

While Virtualization had been adopted by the IT industry for few years, it was something new and revolutionary for the Telecom Network Industry as it was changing the way the whole industry operated. The industry was moving away from the existing Hardware based Network Functions to Software(VNF) like in IT running on commercially available x86 Servers. 

However, definitely unlike legacy setup where both hardware and software was coupled and optimized for efficiency, virtualized setup had its challenges because of which its adoption was slow. Depending on the geography and risk taking appetite of the service provider every operator had its own phase wise plan for adoption of NFV where they would introduce NFV for select components or for greenfield deployments and have them operate along with their existing infrastructure till they are satisfied. 

While virtualization of network looked very promising, implementation of VNFs had its own set of challenges. VNFs being deployed were dependent on the hypervisor configuration and first require it to be configured in lines with its own requirements. Secondly, VNF packages consisted of entire guest OS along with other libraries & packages making it bulky, requiring lot of time to startup and infrastructure computing resources (CPU & RAM). Also due to this dependence on hypervisor configuration & computing resources portability of VNFs becomes a challenge.

In order to address the above challenges and making solutions cloud native, concept of Containerization has started to get adopted in recent years (2018-19 onward) where VNFs are being replaced with Containerized Network Functions (CNFs) and OS level virtualization takes place. Due to the lightweight nature of containers, requiring less start up time, and being infrastructure agnostic CNFs are being preferred now. The ability to deploy docker containers on any Linux and Windows system gives it flexibility to be deployed on any cloud platform(Amazon Web Services(AWS) EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service), IBM Cloud, Red Hat OpenStack, Red Hat OpenShift, etc).

Like Virtualization, Containerized solutions are also being considered for adoption in phase wise manner by operators for brownfield implementations. For the brownfield setups, operators are considering mix of legacy , VNFs & CNFs initially and later moving everything to the cloud in form of VNF/CNF. However in case of greenfield operators or greenfield data centers or 5G network deployment CNFs are being preferred. 2 greenfield deployments currently underway are for Dish Network in US & Rakuten in Japan & they are working towards setting up a purely cloud native network for 4G & future 5G. In order to meet these requirements, many of the VNF vendors have already created their CNFs, while many others are in the process.

The movement of network functions to the cloud (Network Cloudification) using COTS hardware as physical layer through adoption of Virtualization & Containerization has along the way changed the landscape of the telecom industry in multiple ways:

• Transformation of existing offerings: Existing dedicated vendors of network functions(eg. Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia/ALU,etc) had to first create software versions of their products for multiple platforms (OpenStack KVM , VMWARE ESXI, Microsoft Hyper-V, etc) followed by changing their  business models to a software licensing one instead of their existing which relied heavily on maximizing hardware sales.
• Increase of vendors & products involved in a network setup : Due to separation of hardware(NFVI) & software(VNF, EMS, OSS) and introduction of more components as per the ETSI NFV framework shown above (Management & Network Orchestration (MANO):Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM), VNF Manager(VNFM), NFV Orchestrator(NFVO)), more players could participate in this telecom ecosystem instead of being restricted like before. 
  
• Entry of many new entrants:
• Startups (Affirmed Networks, Metaswitch, Altiostar, etc)
• IT players (Google, HP, Dell, Red Hat, Oracle, NetNumber, Mavenir, etc)  who expertise in virtualized hardware/software/network space .
• Major Cloud providers(AWS, Alibaba, Microsoft Azure, etc) started hosting telecom services / network functions for both consumer & enterprise segment offerings. .
• Companies from other verticals like e-commerce( Rakuten) & Media & Entertainment(Dish)  have also forayed into offering their own telecom networks.
  
• Open Source Offerings: In new areas like MANO many Global network operators & vendors collaborated as part of many open source projects to create MANO offerings (e.g. ONAP, OPNFV, OSM, Open-O,etc)
• Acquisitions: Eventually we even saw some of the small VNF companies getting acquired by bigger IT companies or service providers. (Affirmed & Metaswitch Acquired by Microsoft, Reliance Jio acquired Radisys)

In addition to above, network cloudification enables providing use cases under the foray of 5G umbrella i.e. Enhanced Mobile Broadband, Ultra Reliable Low Latency communication(Autonomous Vehicles, Augmented Reality(AR)/Virtual Reality(VR),etc) & IOT (Smart Parking, Smart Home, etc). Also online services & applications provided to customers from different industries like E-Commerce, Retail, Media & Entertainment & Banking can be optimized to provide more user engaging and enriching experience.

Below are few of the major greenfield deployment related news involving Network Cloudification that have taken place or are ongoing in 2020.

1. Dish Network- New Telco player in US currently in process of deploying nation's first virtual 4G wireless Broadband network has selected Mavenir to deliver cloud native OpenRAN software & VMWARE Telco cloud for 5G network build.
2. Rakuten- New operator in Japan announced that they are building the world’s first end-to-end cloud-native mobile network
   
3. Reliance Jio-  a new Telco Service Provider in India launched in 2016 with a fully virtualized setup for offering LTE & VoLTE Services to its customers.

Some of the major acquisitions news are shown below that will play major roles in area of network cloudification & deployment of 5G/IOT services.

1. Microsoft announces agreement to acquire Affirmed Networks to deliver new opportunities for a global 5G ecosystem
2. Microsoft announces definitive agreement to acquire Metaswitch Networks, expanding approach to empower operators and partner with network equipment providers to deliver on promise of 5G
3. Reliance acquires Radisys for 5G & IOT
4. IBM Acquires Red Hat, Completely Changing The Cloud Landscape And Becoming World's #1 Hybrid Cloud Provider

To summarize, the game is the same but the rules have changed with Virtualization and Cloudification and Network game moving from Hardware proprietary to IT Software based. This new Telco involves merging of Networking technologies with Cloud, IT & DevOps technologies. To successfully implement the new Telco, the industries new need of the hour involves requiring employees with knowledge & experience with Cloud/ virtualization technologies and associated programming/scripting languages like Python,etc.

In conclusion, the last decade has been very interesting in Network Evolution and one can only imagine the countless possibilities of what will happen in this next decade. "Definitely going to be exciting!!.

Disclaimer: The post above expresses my sole viewpoint and not the opinion of any organization I work with presently or in the past.