NFWare CEO Discusses Importance of NFV to Service Providers in Forbes Article

Telecom service providers are facing a squeeze on profits despite new services based on faster network technologies like 5G and fiber. A Forbes article by NFWare CEO Alexander Britkin highlights how network functions virtualization (NFV) is growing as a solution to reduce expenses and create a more flexible network.

NFV replaces legacy hardware appliances with software applications running on commercial servers which dramatically reduces costs. This also opens the door to more competition and innovation in the network services space.

The article explores how NFV works and the benefits of NFV, including:

• Reduced capital and operating expenses
• Faster time to market for new services
• Increased network automation and autonomy
• Improved scalability

In the article these high level benefits were made real with a comparison between virtual CGNAT and legacy CGNAT looking at the cost efficiency, scalability, deployment speed and flexibility benefits of each approach.

5G represents a big catalyst for NFV. The article discusses the battle to virtualize the radio access network (RAN) – which is the most compute-centric aspect of the network – has been won and the standards committees are including virtualized approaches in the network standards. As service providers see the success of NFV in 5G, the seed is planted that all network functions can be virtualized.

The article touches on cloud-native containerization, one of the technologies that could slow the growth of NFV. Right now, most network functions are more suited to NFV because it offers deterministic performance and better security. But this could change as service providers buildout their own telecom cloud capabilities that better support cloud native containerized applications.

Could NFV be the difference maker in service providers future? Britkin’s Forbes article provides an argument that it will. You can read the entire article here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2024/08/02/where-network-functions-virtualization-nfv-stands-today/