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VMware partners with Broadband Forum to instantiate 1st European Open Broadband Lab – a multi-vendor Industry Sandbox for innovation and incubation for Cloud based Broadband.

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I am excited to see the next wave of innovation VMware is bringing to the table in the Cloud Central Office Project at Broadband Forum (BBF)!  VMware has partnered with Broadband Forum (see press release) in creating the 1st European Open Broadband Lab , at the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) premises in Berlin.

The business advantages of an Open Broadband Lab are manifold:

  • Service Providers can now leverage a vendor-neutral, and multi-vendor-capable Cloud environment.  They can use this enviroment to verify their Broadband Use Cases and verify interoperability across vendor provided and/or Open Source solutions. Furthermore, they can consume the environment ‘-as-a-service’ and can count on its ability to bootstrap various topologies.  This removes the need for staging of interoperability labs.
  • Vendors can demonstrate their value, and their interoperability capabilities with other vendors and/or Open Source in an open, collaborative and neutral manner.
  • The Broadband Forum can use the Open Broadband Lab to verify and influence its Technical Work with the Cloud Central Office Project.
  • The industry as a whole profits from this Industry Sandbox, enabling innovation and incubation for Cloud Broadband.

Cloud Central Office, a foundation for the Open Broadband Lab

The Cloud Central Office’s aim is to define an architecture for a distributed Cloud based Broadband System that leverages Software defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), consumeable  -as-a-Service.

As a short recap of my previous blog, here is how work is progressed at the Cloud Central Office Project at BBF to that effect:

  • Use Cases for a Cloud Central Office are documented through “Application Notes” (AppNotes). These show the needed interactions across the Interfaces between the Functional Elements in the Cloud Central Office Architectural Framework, as a result of an outside actor engaging with the system.
  • The chain of interactions between the Functional Elements define WHAT functionality is needed inside those Functional Elements without needing to know HOW it is achieved. This allows implementations leveraging Open Source and/or Vendor Provided Software.
  • Candidates for Interfaces are documented (both in terms of the protocol, as well as the information flowing over those interfaces). It is assumed that existing Standards or OpenSource Interfaces will be leveraged as much as possible.
  • AppNotes are instantiated and Test Cases are executed to perform a gap analysis is in order to see whether:
    • The candidate Interface is working as expected.
    • Information Models have to be developed for it (e.g. YANG models, etc).
    • Open Source APIs/Interfaces will have to be adapted or perhaps even upstreamed back into the relevant Open Source community.

The First European Open Broadband Lab, enabled by VMware

In order to allow instantiating these  AppNotes in a Vendor-Neutral and Multi-Vendor environment, various ‘Open Broadband Labs’ will be created across the globe.  Open Broadband Labs will also provide an industry sandbox to accelerate multi-vendor innovation and incubation in areas like Cloud Broadband, 5G, network slicing and wireless-wireline convergence, independent of the AppNotes process.

For the European Open Broadband Lab at EANTC in Berlin, VMware has provided the NFVI portion of the TR-384 Architectural Framework by implementing our VMware vCloud NFV– Openstack Edition, see figure 1 below.

Figure 1 : vCloud NFV as basis for the Open Broadband Lab

VMware vCloud NFV is an ETSI-compliant, fully integrated, modular, multi-tenant platform, and by providing an OpenStack Virtual Infrastructure Manager, we are providing an Open Interface towards 3rdparty Virtual Network Function Managers (VNFM) and Network Function Virtualization Orchestrators (NFVO), including Open Source MANO (OSM) and Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP).  vCloud NFV includes NSX, vSphere, vSAN, and a range of vRealize Suite products to allow Day 2 Operations such as vRealize Log Insight, vRealize Operations, and vRealize Network Insight.

Consumption of the Open Broadband Lab

The Lab, as seen in Figure 2 below, will provide internal Active Directory, DNS and NTP services for internal components, as well as firewalled external access to a set of components such as:

  • A Jumpbox, to allow ingesting software and other artifacts, to upgrade the lab, or install new software components.
  • A Terminal Server, to allow access to the management components of the Lab, for remote management
  • API access to the Services built on top of the Lab.
  • remote access is achieved through VPN and the Domain API is accessible for remote on-boarding of new services.

Figure 2 : Remote Access into the Open Broadband Lab

We are very exited to be helping Broadband Forum in their efforts of making the next generation Broadband Architecture a reality! Furthermore, this shows that VMware is serious about Next Generation Telco Infrastructure by providing this ‘Industry Sandbox!

For more information, or to be part of the Open Broadband Lab, don’t hesitate to reach out to me!

An Update on the work in Broadband Forum’s Cloud Central Office Project (and why it is important to VMware).

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Back in 2016 VMware joined the Broadband Forum (BBF), a consortium of Telecommunication Service Providers, System Integrators and Technology Vendors, as the first Software Vendor. The BBF, amongst other things, develops best practices for the ‘Cloud Central Office’ (CloudCO), a next generating Central Office deployment. CloudCO makes innovative use of the following attributes:

  • A Cloud ‘Anything-as-as-service’ (Xaas) consumption interface,
  • Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and
  • Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Ultra-Fast access (and when formally defined 5G).

The aim is to deliver ultra-fast broadband services with distributed compute and storage to anywhere and any device in home or business locations.  I have been personally very active at the Broadband Forum as the Cloud Central Office Project Stream Leader, setting out the direction and leading the work.  For some history on the Cloud CO project, check my previous blog post here.

The Cloud Central Office Project Stream has accomplished quite a lot already:

  • Defined the Cloud Central Office Reference Architectural Framework in TR-384.
  • Delivered Applicability Scenarios and suggested legacy Use Cases that had to be supported on a Cloud Central Office based architecture, in TR-416.

Work is progressing on Interface Descriptions (WT-411), a catalogue of Test Cases (WT-412) to verify and/or augment these interfaces.  Other work includes co-existence with, and migration from legacy Broadband Architectures (WT-408), amongst other things. Check out my update videos on the BBF website where I elaborate on the progress made to date!

What is the Cloud Central Office?

A TR-384 based architecture aims to disaggregate a lot of the functionality that used to live in monolithic devices such as Broadband Network Gateways (BNG) and other devices.  These devices will be de-composed into various Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), and onboarded onto a Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI).  Access Devices will also leverage  disaggregation in order to move the control and management plane functions to the NFVI, while using SDN to send traffic to the NFVI hosted VNFs.  The NFVI will be implemented on a Software Defined Data Center inside the Central Office i.e. leveraging commodity switches and x86-based servers, such as the one depicted in Figure 1 . IETF NVO3-style Overlays are leveraged for connectivity and security across the NFVI.

(Note, our VMware vCloud NFV is an example of such an NFVI and NSX is our NVO3 compatible solution).

Figure 1: Cloud Central Office Physical Topology

SDN techniques steers Broadband Traffic received from the user at Access I/O devices to the VNFs inside the NFVI.  The Access I/O Control Plane and Management Plane moves off-box by leveraging SDN as well.  After going through the various Network Functions inside the NFVI, traffic travels to the Network I/O devices towards its destination.

The Cloud Central Office Architectural Framework

Although TR-384 is based on the philosophy of certain Open Source projects, it is not ‘yet-another-open-source’ project.  TR-384 defines ‘black boxes’ of functionality inside Functional Modules, with Interfaces describing how these Functional Modules interoperate. In other words, it defines WHAT the functional modules do, but not HOW  to achieve the functionality.  Open and common Interface descriptions achieves interoperability between those functional modules, regardless whether implementing leveraging Open Source software, or Vendor Provider Software.   TR-384’s architectural framework, shown in  Figure 2 below,is compliant with ETSI’s NFV Reference Model.  It adds a couple of extra SDN related components, to allow interworking between Physical Network Functions (such as Access-facing, and Network-facing functions, amongst others), and the VNFs running inside the Cloud Central Office NFVI.

Figure 2 : Cloud Central Office Architectural Framework

Application Notes

The exact nature and definitions of those Interfaces is still a work in progress and will be documented in WT-411.  WT-411 will re-use interfaces available in the industry (Open Standards, or Open Source) as much as possible, and where functionality is missing, it will generate requirements for Standard definitions, or requirements for upstreaming new functionality in Open Source projects, where applicable.  The way that these eventual new requirements will come to light is by using an Agile Methodology through the use of Application Notes, or AppNotes (for a set of publicly available AppNotes, see here).  AppNotes will also become a way for Communication Service Providers to define new and innovative services , using the TR-384 Architectural Framework.

AppNotes are a set of interactions between Cloud Central Office Functional Modules, typically starting with a given actor initiating an interaction at the Cloud Central Office Domain Level Northbound API, or an actor initiating a data plane flow.  The set of Interactions lead to requirements for the Interfaces.  In order to generate those requirements, the AppNote is instantiated running on a real-life Cloud Central Office architecture (see my Open Broadband Lab post here) and will be tested against a set of Test Cases, which will be defined in another set of work i.e. WT-412.   This might result in new requirements for Open Interface and/or Upstreaming into existing Open Source Projects.  Figure 3 shows the relationship between AppNotes, Interface work (WT-411) and Testing efforts (WT-412).

Figure 3 : AppNotes and how they relate to other work.

Why is this work important for VMware?

Our VMware vCloud NFV solution, leveraging VMware NSX, aims to be an NFVI that is truly vendor independent, both from an Underlay, as well as from an VNF perspective. It is our believe that Open standards and open interfaces, combined with a vendor-independent NFV infrastructure, are essential for operators looking for a cost-effective and smooth migration to next-generation architectures.  Broadband Forum’s AppNote approach aims to define Open Interface specifications, while guaranteeing multi-vendor interoperability, and that is why we are very exited about helping out the industry with this work.

I hope this update has been useful and don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have remarks or questions!

VMware Launches its Digital Telco Badge for vCloud NFV at Mobile World Congress 2019

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Gain NFV Knowledge

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a critical building block for 5G networks. VMware’s vCloud NFV solution is already a cornerstone of telco virtualization and has been deployed by more than 70 CSPs globally supporting a wide variety of use cases, supporting hundreds of VNFs in production and more than 600+ million mobile subscribers. To support our global customers and accelerate their success as they transform to digital providers of 5G, Edge and IOT services, we are proud to announce the immediate availability of the VMware PRACTIONER in NFV WITH VCLOUD DIRECTOR badge.

The VMware PRACTIONER in NFV WITH VCLOUD DIRECTOR badge proves that customers understand the concept of virtualization, what VMware solutions can do, and what that means to the telco industry. It further demonstrates that customers understand how VMware vCloud NFV with vCloud Director specifically can accelerate time to revenue, automate service lifecycle and simplify operations management – all while reducing network infrastructure costs.

The VMware PRACTIONER in NFV WITH VCLOUD DIRECTOR is delivered in part, through modern learning programs that foster professional development and acknowledge accomplishments. VMware’s digital badges recognize knowledge, skills, and competency through secure, verifiable digital credentials. Holders of the VMware badge can use it on their business card, LinkedIn profile, or any other digital media.

Skills demonstrated by the PRACTIONER in NFV WITH VCLOUD DIRECTOR badge holder include:

Earning Criteria

Communication service providers can receive 15% off the VMware vCloud NFV with vCloud Director course by sending an email to nfv@vmware.com by April 15, 2019.

Visit the VMware booth at Mobile World Congress in Hall 3 Stand 3M11.

Delivering applications and services for a multi-cloud and 5G network with VMware vCloud NFV 3.0

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Changing CSP Network Requirements

NFV objectives have evolved quite significantly from the initial need for CSPs to virtualize the infrastructure to being able to scale with technology, products, and services into new and adjacent markets.  There is acute focus on operational transformation with CSPs driving continuous innovation and rapid service deployment for 5G and IoT use cases.  Applications, services, and greater network intelligence is being deployed at the network edge to deliver higher QoE and security.

A key enabler of this transformation is the Telco Cloud – an operating model that leverages programmable networks, with NFV and SDN being key enablers.  With the ability to run a multitude of network functions on off-the-shelf servers, CSPs can provision and scale services faster and substantially reduce costs.

With its vision of delivering any application on any device on any cloud, VMware has extended its technology to cross every infrastructure boundary there is, from the data center into public and telco clouds, and the network edge supporting edge clouds and IoT devices.

VMware vCloud NFV – A platform for Multi-Cloud

At Mobile World Congress 2019, VMware has taken another step in the expansion of its vCloud NFV offerings, with the announcement of VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 vCloud Director Edition.

With support for VMware vCloud Director 9.5, the new release features key enhancements in NFV performance, secure multi-tenancy, networking, and multi-site operations, enabling Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to quickly scale and grow revenues while reducing cost and complexity.

VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 vCloud Director Edition

Enhancements in VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 help CSPs realize the true potential of distributed multi-cloud services through accelerated time to revenue leveraging NFV automation and service onboarding, lower infrastructure costs while delivering greater performance, and optimized operations for increased network efficiency and reduced operational costs.

Key capabilities provided with the VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 vCloud Director Edition include:

  • Secure Multi-tenancy and Enhanced RBAC – VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 includes support for vCloud Director 9.5 that implements a redesigned multi-tenant Role Based Access Controls (RBAC) model. The model allows CSP administrators to create Global Tenant Roles assigned to tenant users enabling self-service management without the need of service provider involvement. CSP administrators can also create rights bundles that correspond to tiers of service, separately monetizable functionality, or any other arbitrary rights grouping and make them available to various organizations.
  • Deterministic NFV Performance – VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 includes support for VMware NSX-T Data Center, which adds Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) based techniques to deliver accelerated data plane network performance with the new NSX Managed Virtual Distributed Switch (N-VDS) in Enhanced Data Path mode. Efficient separation of data plane functions from control and management plane functions enables CUPS based architectures while automated NUMA alignment, multi-tiered routing, bare-metal edges, and HugePages support enable increased workload performance while preserving the benefits of key vSphere functionalities like HA, vMotion, and DRS.
  • Efficient Multi-site Deployment – VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 enables CSPs to achieve the scale and manageability required to efficiently deploy and operate distributed multi-cloud deployments. It facilitates efficient cloud services management with the flexibility to deploy centralized VIM for a common management plane across sites or a distributed architecture with federated management. Decoupling NSX-T Data Center functionality from vCenter server enables cloud-scale performance using a distributed control plane architecture, while the separation of data plane workloads from control plane and management plane workloads enables CUPS-based scalable architectures.
  • Advanced Networking – VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 supports a range of new carrier-oriented networking capabilities through dual stack support for NSX-V and NSX-T. The vCloud NFV platform delivers increased network resiliency through fast link failure detection, ERSPAN port mirroring, and support for a broad category of workloads including container-based workloads, multi-cloud workloads, and PaaS platforms.
  • Intent-Based Service Assurance – VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 with support through vRealize Operations 7.0, vRealize Log Insight 4.7, and vRealize Network Insight 3.9, delivers a new paradigm in NFV operations with intent-based assurance that allows CSPs to define operational and business intent for the network and continuously verify performance against the defined intent through Day 0, Day 1 and Day 2 operations.

Evolution of Networking in vCloud NFV

Also announced this year at MWC 2019 is the release of VMware NSX Data Center 2.4.  CSPs need for highly scalable networks that are truly reliable is at an all-time high.

NSX-T Data Center is a core component of vCloud NFV providing the networking overlay support across the complete NFVI and supporting multiple telco-oriented use cases. New networking features now available in NSX Data Center are:

  • IPv6 Support: As business around the world ramp up IPv6 deployments, support for IPv6 in NSX-T meets a critical requirement of telco networks.
  • Scalability: NSX-T 2.4 can scale to hundreds of thousands of routes, over a thousand hosts per NSX domain, and enables high-scale multi-tenancy. 
  • High Availability: NSX-T 2.4 supports clustering with NSX managers, enabling a highly available management plane for GUI and API, reducing the likelihood of NSX operational failures.
  • Service Function Chaining: NSX-T 2.4 introduces the ability to perform Service Insertion and Service Function Chaining, through the IETF SFC framework and NSH, enabling CSPs to rapidly onboard, automate, and launch new services to meet dynamic subscriber demands
  • Container Networking and Cloud Native architectures: VMware is enhancing support for containers with enhanced visibility into all container and PaaS clusters that are supported by a NSX deployment, as well as visibility into all containerized applications supported by a NSX deployment.

VMware Ready for NFV

The VMware Ready for NFV program is a certification program that recognizes VNF partners that have made commitments to the vCloud NFV platform.  VMware Ready for NFV certified partners have completed a range of operability and interworking assessments in a dedicated accreditation facility and have access to VMware product roadmaps and solution development strategies in order to ensure their solutions continue to maximize the potential of the underlying vCloud NFV platform.  CSPs can look to the VMware Ready for NFV certification program as proof of close VNF integration with the vCloud NFV platform.

VMware continues to increase the number of partners that have been certified within the VMware Ready for NFV program. At MWC 2019, we have announced certification of more than 105 Virtual Network Functions from 85 vendors worldwide.  VMware’s broad ecosystem of certified partners creates a true marketplace that helps CSPs remove barriers to successful NFV implementations.

Additional Resources

To learn more about VMware’s vCloud NFV Platform

Introducing VMware Service Assurance: Real-time network intelligence for your network

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Planning for 5G

Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are in the midst of a network transformation as they plan their evolution from 4G to 5G networks.  As CSPs plan their network rollout and the delivery of new 5G services, ensuring reliability, availability, and quality of service (QoS) in their networks is paramount to their success. Service Assurance plays a key role in delivering the foundations of a highly available network with the ability to provide greater insights and analytics along with real-time automation and optimization.

At Mobile World Congress 2019, VMware announced the continuing momentum of delivering key strategic network initiatives with the latest release of VMware Smart Assurance v10.0 and VMware Smart Experience.

VMware extends it operations management portfolio with VMware Smart Assurance and VMware Smart Experience solutions. Six key characteristics are seen necessary for an effective design strategy:

  1. Advanced analytics and automation, fueled by machine learning for proactive avoidance
  2. Distribution, graph based topologies with hierarchical analytics
  3. Real-Time intelligence, for dynamic optimizations and avoidance
  4. Intent-Driven, moving away from static rules to dynamic policies and operational intent
  5. Extensible solution, to cater to declarative constructs
  6. Open solution, that is model driven and offers ease of integration

Key Use Cases Addressed by Smart Assurance and Smart Experience

VMware Smart Assurance and VMware Smart Experience deliver real-time intelligence in a hybrid physical cloud environment spanning transport, network, infrastructure, and services. Operational intelligence ranges in granularity from fault and performance monitoring to individual subscriber experience management.

Key capabilities in VMware Smart Assurance to look for include:

  • Dynamic Topology Discovery: automated VNF and network discovery using VMware Integrated Openstack multi-tenancy and standardized blueprints including TOSCA and HEAT correlating and isolating faults and performance issues across physical (transport, IP core, MPLS) and virtualized layers
  • NFV Assurance: VMware Smart Assurance v10 includes integration with VMware vCloud NFV with support for virtual compute (vSphere), virtual networking (NSX-T), both Virtual Infrastructure Managers – VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO) and vCloud Director (vCD). Smart Assurance 10 enables VMware vRealize Operations to perform multi-tenant cross-domain performance monitoring and isolate faults and degradation across physical, virtualized, and service layers
  • Assurance for Virtual IMS Deployments: VMware Smart Assurance v10 extends a new common information model for vIMS, correlated across several layers such as VNF components, VIM Tenancy, Cloud Infrastructure, and Physical Network, providing effective Performance Monitoring, Root Cause Analysis and Issue Isolation
  • SD-WAN Assurance: VMware Smart Assurance v10 supports SD-WAN enterprise services and is fully integrated with VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud for fault management. It provides discovery of branches, gateways and networks along with providing issue isolation and impact assessment of sites, gateways, and networking. VMware Smart Assurance’s multi-vendor SD-WAN monitoring strategy already in place for Viptela and Versa Networks.
  • Performance Management & Analytics through integration with vRealize Operations: the integration extends vRealize Operations virtual operations management with a single pane of glass visibility across service, virtual and physical domains and includes powerful features such as capacity planning, performance monitoring, cost analysis, and compliance monitoring. The integration with Smart Assurance auto discovers and collects performance statistics from telco services (SD-WAN, vIMS) and physical networks (router, switch, interface, port), enabling vRealize Operations to provide correlated health visibility across VNFs, virtual machines, hosts, logical networks, and physical networks, including Machine Learning with dynamic thresholding and behavioral alerting.

VMware Smart Experience is a streaming analytics solution that delivers real-time actionable insights, at a subscriber level, for mobile access and core network management and optimization. Valuable capabilities and use cases include:

  • Network Planning and Real Time Operations: understand the demand and capacities of cell/sectors, gateways, regions, and data centers.
  • Customer Experience Management: understand the quality of services and effective customer experience over the 2G/3G/4G mobile networks and proactively optimize VIP customers.
  • Fraud Detection: identify various SIM swap and device swap use case scenarios and avoid revenue leakage for voice and data.
  • Location-aware marketing: enable up-sell and cross-sell opportunities to customers with location based subscriber profiling and service consumption.
  • QoS analytics: measure and analyze data and voice QoS with precise granularity – per subscriber, per application, per cell site – in real-time
  • Application and Device profiling: understand the consumption of various applications such as multimedia, browsing, social, etc. dimensioned by devices for targeted cellular network planning, QoS management, and network tuning.

 

The VMware Smart Assurance platform also delivers a new modular architecture featuring:

  • New Data Collector Framework (DCF): enabling a variety of new data sources integration, additional scalability and distribution using Kafka publish/subscribe
  • New Platform Architecture: based on Kafka messaging bus allowing more scalability, application decoupling and sharing of data
  • KPI Engine: declarative component for KPI definition and calculations using multiple streams and expressions
  • Enhanced persistency of events: active and historical events can now be easily analyzed using ElasticSearch simple and sophisticated querying mechanism
  • Enhanced UI/UX: new notification screens based on VMware Clarity framework

VMware solutions are poised to address the key characteristics of an effective service assurance solution which can be enabled in 5G distributed cloud environment composed of hybrid physical and virtual transformations. A real-time dynamic discovery engine embodies the complex multi-directed correlations providing the foundational constructs to enable effective fault and performance management decision trees. Intelligence engines with signature and machine learnt algorithmic approaches, achieve the real-time proactive optimization cadence necessary for autonomous assurance in transport, physical, virtual, and service domains.

Ericsson and VMware forge Alliance to simplify network virtualization

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As communication service providers ramp their investments in 5G, they must respond to increasing customer demands for network performance while containing costs and maximizing value. Market leaders like Ericsson and VMware are helping them achieve these goals.

Heading into Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona, Ericsson and VMware are announcing a new, 5-year alliance agreement aimed at strengthening their longstanding partnership and delivering class-leading experience for communication service provider customers deploying and running a combination of Ericsson applications and VMware’s vCloud NFV platform.

Long Standing Partnership

This new agreement builds on the long-standing partnership between VMware and Ericsson that dates back to 2012.  Working in production, Ericsson has deployed over 300+ VNFs across 50+ unique CSPs running on VMware’s vCloud NFV platform – and we expect to see an increase in demand for our joint solutions continue.

It includes interoperability testing across Ericsson’s portfolio of Virtual Network Functions, Billing and Charging solutions, Automation and Orchestration, with VMware’s vCloud NFV platform to ensure speedy on-boarding and deployment, as well as increasing efficiencies in network operations. Our two companies want to simplify the deployment process for CSPs so they can maximize revenue and be ready for the increasing demands that will be placed on the network with the emergence of 5G and IoT driven use cases.

Ericsson does not stop at VNF certification, however.  With this new 5-year Alliance agreement, we will engage in technical collaborations e.g. in the Cloud Core and Cloud Communication domain, to jointly help secure optimized performance and platform utilization for high volume workloads. All to ensure that CSPs will get a thoroughly tested, interoperable and system verified solutions when they choose to deploy Ericsson VNFs on VMware vCloud NFV.

Beyond network functions virtualization, the Ericsson and VMware partnership will enable deeper technical collaborations, including management and orchestration interoperability with OSS and BSS solutions and exploration of future cloud native solutions and overall automation across the network.

Mobile World Congress

If you are planning to be at Mobile World Congress, we would love to connect and discuss how to help you accelerate your business. Please visit Ericsson in Hall 2 Stand 2060 and VMware in Hall 3 Stand 3M11.

Read the press release here.

 

Accelerating time to market for new digital services in Europe’s largest Telco market

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In Russia, Europe’s largest country and largest telco market, it takes a grander mindset to succeed.

MTS is the market leader. It has more than 100 million active subscribers across all services, and operates in Ukraine, Armenia, and Belarus. And it is much more than a provider of mobile phone services. MTS has business lines covering mobile broadband, fixed line, pay-TV, and video on demand. It has a bank, it invests in FinTech, and it is starting to offer services around Big Data, eSports, cyber security, and IoT. It also sells branded devices.

Naturally, to make sense of this vast portfolio, MTS needs, where possible, common platforms.

The company is creating a global IT and network infrastructure, one that is unified and universal. MTS wants its service infrastructure to be at a high state of readiness, should an opportunity present itself – scalable, efficient and easily replicable in the regions. If a new service isn’t generating a decent margin, it wants to spot this and terminate it. MTS doesn’t want to be saddled with huge under-utilized resources.

MTS wants to be faster to market with new services, particularly digital. To do so it wants to transform its service infrastructure, creating a software and data-driven, programmable and automated service delivery platform. Once complete this will provide the economics, scale, innovation and operational flexibility needed.

VMware vCloud NFV is a fully integrated, modular, multi-tenant Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) platform. It provides MTS with compute, storage, networking, management and operations capabilities. vCloud NFV helps the business accelerate time to revenue, automate service lifecycle and simplify operations management – all while reducing network infrastructure costs.

It is also more efficient to manage and orchestrate. vCloud NFV delivers a single pane of glass with 360-degree visibility and monitoring of the MTS platform along with predictive analytics and logging insights to give greater control of the network. With policy-based automation, MTS can streamline key network processes and allocate and provision VM resources to rapidly provision and deploy NFVs.

This is more than theoretical, it is delivering a real, competitive advantage. Time to market is critical in a highly competitive telco market, particularly one that covers 11 time zones and 17 million square kilometres. Who provides their services fastest, across the whole of Russia, wins.

For MTS, whether it is banking, eSports, video on demand or a new application for mobile customers, it would take an age to implement a new service on traditional infrastructure. Невообразимый*, as they say in Russia.

To learn more about MTS use of VMware please see below:

MTS Video

MTS Case Study 

VMware Shortlisted for Mobile World Congress 2019 GLOMOs

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With just a month to go before GSMA’s Mobile World Congress 2019 kicks off, the GSMA has announced shortlisted companies for its 2019 Global Mobile (GLOMO) Awards. VMware, with its reputation for innovation and rapidly growing traction in the telco space, has been shortlisted in the Best Network Software Breakthrough (companies more than $10 million annual global revenue) category for vCloud NFV OpenStack Edition 3.0.

According to the Mobile World Congress website, the GSMA’s GLOMO Awards offer organizations across the global mobile ecosystem the opportunity to showcase the latest and best mobile products, apps, devices, services and initiatives to the industry and the world. These prestigious awards recognize leading companies making an impact on the telco market around the world.

VMware’s shortlisted solution, VMware vCloud NFV-OpenStack Edition 3.0, is the next generation of the company’s production-proven network functions virtualization (NFV) platform for communications service providers (CSPs). This version of vCloud NFV-OpenStack Edition, which includes VMware Integrated OpenStack-Carrier Edition 5.0,  delivers breakthrough improvements in network performance, new carrier-grade networking capabilities and intent-based service assurance to help improve the total economics of software-defined, open standards-based 5G and multi-cloud telco networks.

GLOMO winners will be announced at Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona Feb 25 – 28, 2019

VMware, a GSMA member, will be demonstrating a range of 5G solutions in Hall 3 booth 3M11 and is the exclusive sponsor of the Connectivity Theme at this year’s event

VMware announces the General Availability of VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 vCloud Director Edition

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VMware has taken another step in the expansion of its NFV offerings, announcing the launch of VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 vCloud Director Edition.  With support for VMware vCloud Director 9.5, the new release features key enhancements in NFV performance, secure multi-tenancy, networking, and multi-site operations, enabling Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to quickly scale and grow revenues while reducing cost and complexity.  Purpose-built for demanding carrier environments, the modular NFV platform lets CSPs deploy both third-party and in-house VNFs with the confidence that all the component solutions will interoperate efficiently, allowing them to focus on delivering profitable applications and services to customers.

                                                       VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 vCloud Director Edition

 

A key challenge facing CSPs at the dawn of the 5G era is to dynamically deploy and manage the growing number of services and multi-cloud environments.  Enhancements in VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 help CSPs realize the true potential of distributed multi-cloud services through accelerated time to revenue leveraging NFV automation and service onboarding, lower infrastructure costs while delivering greater performance, and optimized operations for increased network efficiency and reduced operational costs.

 

VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 vCloud Director Edition Advantage

  • Secure Multi-tenancy and Enhanced RBAC

VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 includes support for vCloud Director 9.5 that implements a redesigned multi-tenant Role Based Access Controls (RBAC) model. The model allows CSP administrators to create Global Tenant Roles assigned to tenant users enabling self-service management without the need of service provider involvement. CSP administrators can also create rights bundles that correspond to tiers of service, separately monetizable functionality, or any other arbitrary rights grouping and make them available to various organizations.

  • Deterministic NFV Performance

VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 includes support for VMware NSX-T Data Center, which adds Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) based techniques to deliver accelerated data plane network performance with the new NSX Managed Virtual Distributed Switch (N-VDS) in Enhanced Data Path mode. Efficient separation of data plane functions from control and management plane functions enables CUPS based architectures while automated NUMA alignment, multi-tiered routing, bare-metal edges, and HugePages support enable increased workload performance while preserving the benefits of key vSphere functionalities like HA, vMotion, and DRS.

  • Efficient Multi-cloud Deployment

VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 enables CSPs to achieve the scale and manageability required to efficiently deploy and operate distributed multi-cloud deployments. It facilitates efficient cloud services management with the flexibility to deploy centralized VIM for a common management plane across sites or a distributed architecture with federated management. Decoupling NSX-T Data Center functionality from vCenter server enables cloud-scale performance using a distributed control plane architecture, while the separation of data plane workloads from control plane and management plane workloads enables CUPS-based scalable architectures.

  • Advanced Networking

VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 supports a range of new carrier-oriented networking capabilities through dual stack support for NSX-V and NSX-T. The vCloud NFV platform delivers increased network resiliency through fast link failure detection, ERSPAN port mirroring, and support for a broad category of workloads including container-based workloads, multi-cloud workloads, and PaaS platforms.

  • Intent-Based Service Assurance

VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 with support through vRealize Operations 7.0, vRealize Log Insight 4.7, and vRealize Network Insight 3.9, delivers a new paradigm in NFV operations with intent-based assurance that allows CSPs to define operational and business intent for the network and continuously verify performance against the defined intent through Day 0, Day 1 and Day 2 operations.

 

Additional Resources

Open Works Here! Migrating Telco Providers and Partners to a Tried and True Multi-Cloud Ready Open Stack

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Greetings from OpenStack Summit! We’re here this week to talk about the opportunities for OpenStack. Telcos and CSPs in particular have looked to OpenStack as the centerpiece of their virtualization and software-defined infrastructure strategy, which is needed as we move towards 5G, multi-access edge computing (MEC)/edge and IoT scenarios. Unfortunately, OpenStack has not quite realized its potential in this regard. Telcos trying to stand up OpenStack for their NFV deployments today face significant operational complexity, cost overruns and scaling challenges—inviting questions about the efficacy of their deployments and causing them to look for new ways to problem solve for OpenStack. Further complicating matters is the drive to a distributed architecture with cloud, core and edge computing, and the move toward modern application architectures in the mobile-cloud era.

VMware has embarked on a two-pronged approach to address the dire need to make OpenStack work:

  1. Deliver a robust OpenStack offering VMware Integrated OpenStack, that provides the best of OpenStack, yet fixes some of its key flaws, and
  2. Enable providers and partners to convert & migrate their VNFs to be able to take advantage of VMware Integrated OpenStack and vCloud NFV, leveraging VMware HCX.

VMware Integrated OpenStack: OpenStack That Works:

VMware is addressing the need for more effective OpenStack deployments head-on with a leading virtualization platform, allowing our system integrator partners to provide a unified framework across IT, network and edge for telcos worldwide. VIO is VMware’s answer to the challenges of operationalizing OpenStack—and customers using the VMware OpenStack migration service will automatically have access to VMware Integrated OpenStack. We released VMware Integrated OpenStack 5.1 today.

Key features include:

  • Queens-based OpenStack Distribution—take advantage of the latest upstream functionality using the most recent OpenStack release
  • Streamlined OpenStack Deployment—quickly deploy a standard OpenStack on top of VMware SDDC. Perform upgrades with minimal disruption. This results in accelerated time to revenue.
  • Best-of-Breed Infrastructure—take advantage of advanced enterprise and cloud features and capabilities delivered by VMware vSphere, VMware NSX and VMware vSAN, including better security, high availability, simplified maintenance and disaster recovery.
  • Integrated Operations and Management—Out-of-the-box vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Automation integrations for streamlined operations such as health checks, troubleshooting and capacity management, as well as governance and control with user management, role-based access control (RBAC), quotas and more.
  • VMware Integrated OpenStack “in a box”—build small-footprint, highly-resilient micro data centers based on VMware Integrated OpenStack and have full control over these micro data centers and apps via automated, API driven orchestration and lifecycle management.

HCX – OpenStack Migration Services:

We talked about how VMware Integrated OpenStack significantly solves some of the critical issues above. But how do we get to the desired state? To help with this change, we’re introducing new migration services to enable customers to move from alternative OpenStack deployments to VMware Integrated OpenStack. We welcome providers and partners to contact us regarding early engagements with VMware to leverage such migration services.

 

The migration service leverages VMware HCX technology, which provides a seamless way to migrate workloads across private, hybrid and public clouds. HCX now additionally can convert OpenStack VMs running on KVM to migrate and run on VMware Integrated OpenStack. For telcos and CSPs, this capability now creates a common foundation across their IT, B2B, and NFV environments (the telco cloud). Additionally, it also connects these telco clouds to private, public, hybrid and edge environments. Thus, for the first time, we can have a unified architecture across IT, cloud tech (CT), network tech (NT) and edge tech (ET), accelerating the journey to 5G, edge/MEC, and IoT use cases.

 

“VMware has made a breakthrough in OpenStack production readiness—no question,” said John Antonio, CSO of IDX, a VMware partner. “Telcos and CSPs have struggled with making OpenStack work effectively in their environments, and instead of abandoning their investment, they can now work with VMware to benefit from their “PRODUCTION READY” legacy and entirely managed migration of their OpenStack deployments. VMware has the virtualization chops and the right mix of traditional and new technology to effectively serve these customers and enable them to make the most of OpenStack.”

By providing a dependable OpenStack solution that includes a robust stack, and a migration service to get there, VMware is taking the complexity out of OpenStack to enable customers to capture value from their existing deployments. Finally, there will be an OpenStack that can work for carriers and CSPs at scale.

For more information on VMware’s OpenStack migration managed service, please visit booth B14 at OpenStack Summit in Berlin.

 

 

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