NEC and its software subsidiary, Netcracker Technology, are rolling out platforms and services that officials with the companies said will help service providers more easily adopt and deploy network virtualization technologies.
The two vendors on May 9 unveiled their Agile Virtualization Platform and Practice (AVP) offering, which includes collaboration and management software, applications to help service providers better monetize their virtualization efforts and services to help customers plan out and deploy their virtualization initiatives.
The tools in AVP will help accelerate the adoption of software-defined networking (SDN) and network-functions virtualization (NFV) among service providers, according to Shunichiro Tejima, executive vice president at NEC, noting that the offering will give customers access to the industry expertise held by NEC and Netcracker.
“AVP is more than just a standalone product or a point solution,” Tejima said in a statement. “Service providers are challenged to commercialize their SDN/NFV initiatives and launch them, at scale, into the market. With AVP, we can reduce the time-to-market for SDN/NFV deployments and help remove much of the risk associated with digital transformations.”
SDN and NFV are designed to make it easier for enterprises and service providers to scale their networks and make them more agile and dynamic, enabling them to more easily spin out services for their employees and customers and to adapt their networks more quickly to rapidly changing business demands.
Analysts with SNS Research are forecasting that investments in SDN and NFV by telecommunications companies and service providers will grow 46 percent a year between now and 2020, reaching more than $18 billion in revenue by the end of 2020. Mobile operators and service providers already are making investments in some areas such as transport networks, mobile core, customer premises equipment (CPE) and content delivery networks (CDNs), the analysts said in a report released May 9.
Nutcracker President and CEO Andrew Feinberg said in a statement that adoption of SDN and NFV comes with challenges, but that “AVP directly addresses the operational, organizational and commercial requirements needed to successfully launch digital initiatives, allowing for faster service delivery, greater revenue opportunities and a better customer experience.”
Through the NEC/Netcracker offering, service providers will be able to build and launch services more quickly, and manage and integrate existing and virtualized network operations to create agile development environments, officials with both companies said.
AVP includes the Virtualization Development and Operations Center (VDOC) collaboration environment that enables system architecture, network planning and design and deployment teams to automate life cycle service management. The collaboration can occur across internal departments and with third parties, including vendors and systems integrators.
Business Enablement Applications (BEAs) are microservices-based application components that can be deployed in public, private or hybrid clouds that are designed to help service providers better monetize virtualization capabilities, officials said.
Hybrid Operations Management (HOM) is software that enables virtual and traditional networks to operate at the same time at scale, and AVP’s Primary System Integration Practice (PSIP) helps service providers with all parts of their virtualization projects, from initial plans to deployment.