35 percent telecom operators are planning to deploy network functions virtualization (NFV) in 2015, according to a survey by IHS.

Main growth drivers for NFV deployments include: usage of software for quick revenue, increase operational efficiency, scale services up or down quickly, new services and efficiencies not possible with current technologies.

The report does not share specific details on investment plans of these telecom operators in NFV.

“Though we’re still in the early stages of a long-term transition to NFV-SDN architected networks, many carriers will be moving from proof-of-concept tests and lab evaluations to commercial deployments of NFV in 2015,” said Michael Howard, senior research director for carrier networks at IHS.

The telecom analysis report found that all major operators are either now deploying NFV or plan to within the next few years. Telecoms believe that NFV and its SDN (software-defined networking) companion are a fundamental change in telecom network architecture that will deliver benefits in service agility and new revenue, operational efficiencies and Capex savings.

The IHS report said 48 percent of carriers plan to evaluate NFV by the end of 2015. The main NFV use cases include virtual enterprise CPE (vE-CPE), service chaining and virtual network platform as a service (VNPaaS). Lack of carrier grade products and training staff are the main challenges in the NFV deployment market, said IHS.

Dell’Oro Group in a telecom analysis report in May 2015 said NFV leverages virtualization software and Cloud computing used by Internet content and web service providers such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Shin Umeda, vice president at Dell’Oro Group, said: “Up to now, NFV implementations have been on a small scale, but we are seeing signs that some very large projects will start ramping in the next 12 months.”

Baburajan K
[email protected]