The reality now is virtual

Imagine an account manager of a large Internet service provider. In another day of work, he picks up the phone, call the CEO of a promising startup and after a productive conversation is with the task of providing an Internet access service high speed.

After some back and forth with the CEO, he understands that the company needs more than just the basic Internet for its 100 employees – also need unified communications, payroll and cloud-based inventory management, and streaming video with guaranteed quality for more effective conferences and trainings. The account manager then riding a proposal and sends it to the CEO. Enjoying reading, the CEO gives the account manager’s request.

“Then we will be ready in about three months?” question the CEO.

“No,” said the salesman, “everything is already up and running.”

This, exactly this could be the future of the business of the service providers: personalized services scheduled on demand, with just a few mouse clicks, without sending technical or time-consuming and costly physical facilities.

For years, service providers see their business model challenged to spend millions reinforcing its network of physical infrastructure to support, for example, the increasing demand for bandwidth over-the-top content (OTT) companies like Netflix, Facebook and Amazon. Providers is making the investment, but much of the revenue goes to the OTT.

In addition, it can be said that agility in the implementation of new network services does not meet the current needs of business. Today, it is impractical to wait for 60 days or more to perform the pilot of a new service, for example. With Otts slamming the door operators, something has to change and the possibility of trying out new services with agility can help service providers to change this situation by improving their revenues.

Entering the new era with virtualization

The infrastructure can be deployed flexibly when and where it is needed the flexibility to be scaled according to the most varied demands. Rather than spending time with testing and qualification of new equipment and training on various platforms and operating systems, virtualization enables providers to seamlessly and affordably, deploy new revenue-generating services, such as virtual security or the managed cloud service – all in minutes, not in months.

“Some of the biggest challenges faced by network service providers currently are that both resources and capacity planning are static, installation intervals are months from days or hours, and the network is not flexible enough to deploy new services quickly to meet the demands of ever-changing market. “This is the comment Nav Chander, IDC research manager, World Telecom division.” Service providers that use virtualization to greater scalability, automation and speed in the provision of new services will have more flexibility to enter new markets, increase customer satisfaction and profitability. “

With virtualization comes the possibility of the provider to scale your network dynamically adjusted to demand more and more quickly. And what’s the point? The advantage is the possibility to activate new services quickly and with lower initial costs. It opens the doors to try new services and innovation, safer to operate and less uncertainty to invest.

In addition, the connectivity needs are not the same for all customers. Thus, routine maintenance activities or implementation services for a client can mean network downtime for all customers who share the same carrier network element. With virtual routers, already on the market, service providers can just use separate bodies for each client through virtual machines on an x86 server, allowing complete independence between them.

View this scenario: a service provider has just won a project to provide Internet and services for a large company with national coverage. Current infrastructure covers 75% of the corporation’s facilities, but there is still a problem to be solved. In the traditional model, it would need to purchase one or more routers and new facilities to provide the 25% of needed services and considering a capacity surplus to promptly meet any increase in demand of this corporation. In the virtual model, the provider can use a cloud model, allowing meet initial demand and also address future growth in an agile way. Similarly, if the demand does not increase investment in virtual routers can still be easily redirected for other purposes minimizing the impact of spare capacity in the network elements.

Despite the new era of virtualization is increasingly a reality, the physical routers are still necessary and equally important. Each market has its peculiarities and some situations require full physical routing, while others are in the virtual model the best solution. There is also the possibility of a hybrid where physical and virtual routers coexist and operate fully integrated using a common operating system. From now on, service providers now have maximum flexibility to use the right tool for each project.

Virtualization is the key to raising the business of service providers to a new level of excellence, to provide answers market demands at a fraction of traditional costs and time. And, as a bonus, some of these devices fit on a thumb drive!

Full article: http://corporate.canaltech.com.br

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