NFV Forum: From PoC To Proven

SUMMARY   |   AGENDA   |   ATTENDEES   |   LIBRARY   |   VIDEO RECAP

Silicon Valley, California, Feb 3, 2016/Meeting Recap/  The Telecom Council took our community to HP Enterprise on Tuesday 7 for a meeting for our NFV / SDN forum. The topic was “NFV: From PoC to Proven”. Our meeting thematically explored the fact that NFV functions are now passing from the Proof of Concept stage to…whatever comes after. And what we learned was:

• VNFs work, they can be chained, the technology is sound.
• success in the PoCs is leading to wider NFV adoption
• NFV enables a wider market for telecom solutions, with more participation from new vendors and startups
• identification of challenges in the PoCs, and a focus on mitigating those
• a shift to use of Open technologies and the interoperability work needed
• as VNFs begin to be deployed in greater numbers, MANO (Orchestration) is emerging as the next challenge
• a start at business transformation that includes shifting from a Box culture to an IT DevOps culture

A big thanks to all attendees, our speakers, the host HPE, and our panel moderator, Peter Jarich from Current Analysis. Most lively panelist award goes to a tie between Michael Bushong from Brocade, and JL Valente from Cisco, who sparred entertainingly around which company was poised for world domination.

The key take-away from the meeting was that the best practices for network operators with NFV include getting started. This is not a technology that lends itself to a Second Mover advantage. Because it involves cultural transformation, it cannot be done quickly with a  forklift technology upgrade. Culture change is slow, requires re-training, new hiring practices, and organizational change. These can only successfully take place gradually. Start now.