Advantages

Upon first examination, the Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) for Tools approach may not seem ideal for analytic tool vendors; but the opposite is, in fact, true. NFV allows for a flatter market to be set up and opens up additional new business to the tool vendors – from many carriers that would ordinarily not be able to afford the services of such highly-complex and costly tools, akin to renting instead of buying, as well as enabling a new “try before you buy” approach to analytic purchases. This approach also allows larger service providers to help tool vendors to better see their needs in a shorter timeframe and with changes that can be made much faster in software rather than waiting for a new hardware platform to be developed and released.

This allows tool vendors to be more relevant to service providers and, therefore, more business can be transacted as a result – with the natural outcome that tool vendors are able to bring better and more relevant solutions to their service provider customers. Also overcome are the issues of appliance-based throughput processing models, which are unsustainable as data rates rise.  The NFV for Tools model helps tool vendors to have products for today as well as for tomorrow as the pipe widths grow far beyond what is achievable to be processed in appliance-based silicon.

NFV for Tools is also good for carriers. It allows them to more effectively take analytic processing functions and use them in a way that meets their future business models – helping the carriers to stay in business and buy more tools over the longer term. It allows the carrier to easily select which tools they want which data to see, as well as to reduce costs for tools they no longer need, or seldom use on-demand. It helps the carrier to become more efficient and to offer their subscriber better services which are better managed, helping to reduce churn and effectively allow the carrier to invest more into the future of their network – to become leading carriers.

Advancing visibility

Analytic tool vendors can use the pervasive visibility approach to open up several avenues of new business. Many carriers would otherwise be unable to afford the services of such highly-complex and costly tools and larger service providers will be able to help tool vendors better respond to their needs in a shorter timeframe. The resulting increase in relevance and value to the service providers would likely lead to more business generation for the tool vendors. Carriers can also more effectively take advantage of the analytic processing functions in a way to meet their future business models. Carriers can easily select the tool they want for each type of data, as well as reduce costs for tools they no longer need or seldom use. In an environment where LTE has significantly reduced the competitive differentiation between networks, solutions that provide cost-effective network visibility are needed to provide alternatives to increase the business value of service providers.