By Ram Sridharan and Steve Davidson, Nokia
The business environment for MSO’s commercial customers has changed; it’s a disruptive world where yesterdays technology is hindering the need to accelerate towards cloud-based IT. This is particularly evident in the area of launching new business services. Traditionally, business services are tightly connected to a dedicated network infrastructure and based on a set functionality. This has forced businesses into the complex world of networking and service delivery platforms in order to achieve the network and service capabilities that match their specific business needs. Many enterprise branch locations (as well as Small and Medium Businesses - SMBs) lack the on-site technical support necessary to manage network services at these locations.
This paper examines the industry architecture concepts and delivery platform requirements for the rapid deployment of value-added cable business services that MSOs can provide to new and existing customers. The paper covers NFV (Network Function Virtualization) and SDN (Software Defined Network) -related topics focusing on tools and automation techniques both in a data center and branch office environment that would provide MSO business customers with the power to self manage and deploy their own network services.