IHS Analyst Michael Howard: SDN/NFV is the Key of 5G Network Innovation

October 19-20, ZTE Wireless & Services User Congress 2017 was held in Brussels, Belgium. At the congress, Michael Howard, Executive Director & Advisor of IHS Markit, delivered a speech at the topic of “Mobile Operators: Evolving SDN/NFV Plans in Preparation for 5G”. 
As the keys to 5G network innovation, SDN and NFV will be deployed by service providers that control 61% of global telecom CAPEX to upgrade legacy networks, surveyed by IHS.

Michael said that, 5G core will use open source software and hardware and software acceleration techniques, features control and user plane separation (CP/UP) and mobile edge computing (MEC), and is reprogrammable. According to the survey of IHS, PaaS-based network slicing and IoT applications as well as mobile core VNFs will be the key points of operators' planning and deployment.

ZTE service-oriented 5G Cloud Native solution, Cloud ServCore, leverages flexible modularized architecture. The system is highly scalable, programmable and automated. (It addresses the needs of all connections and all services in 5G era , and also meets fast deployment and individualized customization demands of vertical industries and IoT services.

ZTE Carrier DevOps Builder uses enhanced carrier-grade Docker technologies to achieve visual design and agile operation and maintenance (O&M) of microservice-based network slices DevOps leverages big data and AI technologies to provide closed-loop intelligent analysis, automated design, automated development, automated deployment and automated O&M. 

Michael also mentioned that 70% carriers plan to deploy the Central Office Re-Architected as a Data Center (CORD).  ZTE Cloud DC solutions uses SDN and NFV technologies to provide upper layer applications with the cloud environment supporting rapid deployment, convenient O&M and flexible elasticity. In addition, this solution complies with the ETSI standard architecture and is enhanced based on OpenStack, to provide carrier-grade highly-reliable and high-performance assurance. ZTE Cloud DC solution is widely used and fully approved in massive fields such as telecom, education, medical, finance, and government.

At this congress, ZTE demonstrated 5G-oriented network evolution and cloud infrastructure services. So far, ZTE has deployed more than 240 SDN/NFV commercial and POC offices around the world, and its vIMS/vEPC solutions have been in large-scale commercial use.