VMware (NYSE: VMW) recently announced a significant expansion of its telco NFV portfolio that provides communications service providers (CSPs) with unprecedented network operations transparency and seamless transition to multi-cloud and 5G. Through assurance and automation capabilities that span physical and virtual networks, VMware will give carriers what they need to make the most of today's networks while moving towards 5G, including security.
CSPs continue the roll-out of network functions virtualisation (NFV) to improve network and operational efficiency, support new and more tailored services, prepare for 5G and implement cloud strategies.
VMware's latest advancements in service assurance give CSPs a strong foundational NFV platform with advanced networking features, accelerated data plane performance, intent-based assurance and support for a broad set of certified VNF applications to deliver multiple services and applications today and bridge the gap to tomorrow's 5G networks.
"With the current demands placed on carrier networks reaching new levels, and 5G on the horizon, there's no room for error when it comes to network infrastructure. Near real-time solutions are the key to identifying and fixing issues in order to keep networks operating. Networks need unified monitoring, automation and assurance across physical and virtualised networks to deliver the highest levels of performance, scalability and resiliency," said Gabriele Di Piazza, vice-president products and solutions, Telco NFV Group, VMware. "Integration of VMware Smart Assurance with carrier-proven solutions such as VMware vCloud NFV and VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud will give our customers the firepower needed to make the most of network resources."
Unified service assurance across physical, virtual environments with VMware Smart Assurance 10
Critical to 5G roll-out and telco transformation is the ability to treat hybrid physical and virtual networks as a single network entity and assure services across both environments. VMware Smart Assurance 10 will provide assurance capabilities to deliver service impact and root-cause analysis with visibility across physical and virtual networks, as well as multi-cloud environments. This will help identify how resources are being consumed and whether service level agreements are being met.
VMware Smart Assurance will automate discovery of more than 4 000 physical and virtual devices across telco networks, accelerating time to visibility across the network. With VMware Smart Assurance, CSPs will gain an automated approach to operational intelligence to reduce service impact and operational expenses. The solution's automation capabilities maintain a stable configuration to prevent network incidents while proactively detecting abnormal patterns, providing a high-quality subscriber quality of experience.
This new release of VMware Smart Assurance will also deliver support for: NSX SD-WAN by VeloCloud, a new Mobile Core model able to manage and monitor virtual IMS (vIMS) applications, and tight integration with NSX-T Data Centre. It will also integrate with VMware Integrated OpenStack and VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), leveraging vROps Machine Learning technology for performance management and dynamic thresholding analysis.
VMware Smart Experience with real-time network insights
VMware Smart Experience will provide CSPs with real-time network insights and enables new revenue streams. A real-time streaming analytics solution providing CSPs with the ability to generate actionable insights from their access and core network data, VMware Smart Experience will improve customer experience, optimising resources and creating new revenue streams.
VMware Smart Experience ingests, manages and enriches high-speed streaming data from various mobile network elements and correlates it with configuration, network, subscriber and other details for comprehensive insights, a key value proposition for future 5G networks and edge computing.
"As we re-architect MetTel's network services into a cloud native model, we will use the VMware Telco NFV reference architecture with vCloud NFV at the core and VMware SD-WAN at the edge. This will allow MetTel to provide global services more efficiently and effectively at a scale that meets the current customer volumes, allowing us to be more profitable as we grow," said Edward J Fox III, chief technology officer, MetTel. "The VMware solution permits MetTel to provide our enterprise customers with a truly unique solution that brings unmatched performance, operability and security to the art of end-to-end networking."
Automated, scalable, secure virtual cloud networking with VMware NSX-T Data Centre
VMware NSX-T Data Centre is a core component of vCloud NFV that provides a software network overlay across the complete NFV infrastructure and supports multiple telco use cases. VMware NSX-T Data Centre provides native full-stack networking and security for containerised workloads, consistent granular policy on a per-container basis, and integration across apps, platforms, hypervisors, sites and clouds. The new VMware NSX-T Data Centre 2.4 release delivers even higher levels of cloud-scale, operational simplicity, resiliency and performance. This includes IPv6 support, near line-rate speed, high availability, and scalability to tens-of-thousands of unique networks per NSX-T Data Centre instance. With Network Service Header (NSH)-based service chaining, service providers can deliver new services faster while significantly reducing CapEx and OpEx.
Seamless migration and multi-cloud mobility for the 5G-ready telco cloud
CSPs are delivering innovation at a rapid scale as they deploy applications and services today for 4G networks, deploy services at the edge and then seamlessly migrate networks and services to 5G. The release of VMware vCloud NFV 3.0 with support for vCloud Director 9.5 provides several transformative capabilities essential to modern telco networks, such as control and user plane separation (CUPS) for distributed 5G architectures, hybrid execution environment supporting VMs and containers, acceleration for data-plane workloads, multi-vendor VNF onboarding and rapid service delivery, and use of open source technologies for interoperability and rapid innovation. Key capabilities in vCloud NFV 3.0 include securing multitenant cloud networks, efficient multi-site deployments, carrier-class performance, advanced networking and operations management.
VMware HCX enables application mobility and infrastructure agility to prepare telco cloud environments for 5G. VMware HCX builds a hybrid highway interconnecting heritage infrastructure, modern SDDCs, cloud CSPs and multi-VIM providers such as vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO), vCloud Director, and Commercial non-vSphere OpenStack offerings to enable true hybrid virtual infrastructure mobility. HCX enables seamless and flexible application and VNF migrations with operations automation that will help CSPs rapidly modernise, transform, and mobilise their cloud infrastructure. VMware HCX brings telco infrastructure to the multi-cloud world.
VMware expands ready for NFV Certification programme
VMware continues to increase the number of partners that have been certified within the VMware Ready for NFV Certification programme. This programme provides CSPs with the commitment that VMware partner VNF solutions will seamlessly and effectively deploy, run, and interoperate with VMware vCloud NFV. VMware now has certified 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.
The complete list of VMware Ready for NFV certified solutions is available at: https://www.vmware.com/solutions/industry/telco-technology-partners.html
VMware is a sponsor of the ITWeb Security Summit, southern Africa's definitive conference and expo for information security, IT and business professionals. The 14th annual ITWeb Security Summit, to be staged at the Southern Sun Cape Sun on 23-24 May and the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, from 27-31 May, will be a high-profile conference and business exhibition featuring top international, African and local speakers delivering key insights across three focused tracks, interactive workshops and in-depth training courses.
The event will demystify emerging cyber security strategies in AI, blockchain, IOT, DevSecOps and more, and give delegates an understanding of how to increase their businesses' cyber resiliency.
For more information, go to https://v2.itweb.co.za/event/itweb/security-summit-2019/?page=home.
Additional information
* Click here for more details on VMware Smart Assurance 10.
* Click here for more details on VMware vCloud NFV 3.0.
* VMware has launched its Digital Telco Badge for NFV at Mobile World Congress 2019. Click here for more information.
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