The Tesla Model S has a mode called “Ludicrous mode” that allows the driver to reach 60 miles per hour (about 96 km/h) in just 2.8 seconds. That ability to wow drivers and passengers in 2.8 seconds is impressive, but then what? How do you get to 160 mph? On the German Autobahn, 60 miles per hour is considered slow and “please move over to the right lane” speed. The last time I was in a car on the Autobahn, my friend drove a BMW M5 at 260 km/h (around 160 miles per hour).  That takes a completely different level of instrumentation, focus and capabilities than the first 2.8 seconds. If we had our way, we would have combined the acceleration of the Tesla, with BMWs reliability, comfort, high-end speed, availability (wait until next year for a car?) and the total control my driver friend had to maintain in order to drive the car for an hour at 160 mph.

Operator networks and the services they deliver are a lot like cars. For starters, we want to be able to deploy a new service quickly. This is part of the drive and the benefits of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). Instead of physically rolling out boxes to a data center, connecting them to each other with cables, paying for their cooling and electricity for every new services we want to offer, if we just virtualize the network, we should be able to deploy new services with a few clicks. Obviously, once these services are deployed, we have to manage the virtualized network and provide high service reliability and availability. If something does go wrong, we’d like to rapidly identify the root cause and resume normal operations as quickly as possible.

At the OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, we are taking attendees on this ride.  VMware is demonstrating deployment and 360-degrees monitoring of a Virtual IMS network with OpenStack on vCloud NFV. Continue reading →