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New Report Presents Compelling Business Case for Why Mobile Network Operators Must Move to NFV Now
[July 15, 2015]

New Report Presents Compelling Business Case for Why Mobile Network Operators Must Move to NFV Now


ACTON, Mass., July 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Affirmed Networks, the leader in virtualized mobile networks, today announced the availability of a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Study providing a detailed business case outlining the benefits for Mobile Network Operators that move to an architecture based on Network Function Virtualization (NFV).  The study, conducted by industry research firm ACG and sponsored by Affirmed Networks and VMware, makes a compelling argument for why Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) should accelerate their move to a NFV-based architecture.

Benefits of NFV for MNOs

According to the findings of the report, for MNOs, the decision to delay network virtualization efforts can be a costly one, as traditional network architectures can cost them millions in unnecessary capital and operating expenses.  As part of a comprehensive research effort, the report conducted a five-year cost comparison between MNOs with traditional and virtualized network architectures.  According to the research:

  • MNOs that transitioned to an NFV-based platform began saving money in the first year and realize an investment payback in three years;
  • Adopting a virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC) solution, reduced capex by 69% and opex by 67% on average; and
  • Mobile operators were able to deploy a virtualized network much more quickly (in as little as six months) than they were with traditional networks (15 months on average) resulting in quicker time to market and time to revenue.

"In order to increase both network capacity and performance, and also accelerate service creation, MNOs have the option of staying with traditional architectures or moving toa virtualized approach," said Ray Mota, President, ACG Research.  "While we are seeing that many operators intend to move toward a virtualized approach, what we saw as a result of this research were the severe negative consequences that delaying that migration can have on their bottom line."



Application Agnostic Advantages
As part of their analysis, ACG explored two common deployment scenarios to provide a holistic view of how the benefits of virtualization hold true regardless of application.  Specifically, the report first looked at how a virtualized infrastructure would compare as part of a large-scale, consumer broadband service offering, and it also explored the benefits of NFV as part of a Machine-to-Machine (M2M) service offering.  The benefits of moving to a virtualized environment were evident in both deployment scenarios.

"Affirmed Networks was founded with a vision of the many benefits that NFV would deliver to operators from both a cost and revenue perspective," said Amit Tiwari, Affirmed Network's Vice President of Strategic Alliances and Systems Engineering. "While we have seen these benefits first-hand as part of the more than 20 deployments we currently have underway, it was powerful, however, to see just how favorably these benefits compared against traditional architectures in an independent, multi-year, multi-scenario economic analysis.  The findings clearly make a case for operators not to just move to NFV, but do it as quickly as possible."


NFV represents a new software-defined architecture that addresses declining margins and limited service velocity facing communications service providers," said David Wright, vice president of operations, Telco NFV Group at VMware. "However, simply moving away from proprietary hardware to a software architecture only solves part of the challenge. To deploy NFV in a way that will deliver a positive business outcome, all VNFs (Virtual Network Functions) should be accommodated on a single software platform. From the outset, building an independent platform capable of multi-vendor VNF support should be a key focus of any NFV project."

All NFV Solutions Not Created Equal                                                                                      The report also revealed that that not all virtualized solutions offer the same benefits or the same results. Some NFV solutions deliver greater benefits by extending the value of virtualization through enhanced capabilities across several areas including dynamic scaling, load balancing, service chaining and orchestration and support for commercial hypervisors and hardware.

To download a full copy of the report, go to: http://www.affirmednetworks.com/tco-report/

About Affirmed Networks, Inc.
Affirmed Networks has achieved significant attention as its Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solution has become the standard for the world's top mobile operators. Currently, the company has been deployed commercially, including in Tier 1 and Tier 2 mobile networks, and is engaged in many trials worldwide. For more information, please visit: www.affirmednetworks.com.

VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150715/236996-INFO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-report-presents-compelling-business-case-for-why-mobile-network-operators-must-move-to-nfv-now-300113579.html

SOURCE Affirmed Networks


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