NFV and Carrier SDN Wrap Up

This week we attended the NFV and Carrier SDN: Automation & Monetization event put on by Light Reading in Denver, Colorado. Working with service providers and carriers at QOS is core to our business, with our partnerships driving some of the largest SD-WAN implementations in the market today. QOS is a subject matter expert for our service provider partners – acting as an extension of their SD-WAN teams. With our highly trained technical engineering and support teams, that are purpose built around SD-WAN, we come to the table with an unmatched knowledge around designing and deploying network solutions to our customers.

At the event we had the opportunity to really touch on where the SD-WAN marketplace is going. Aaron Tomosky, QOS’s Director of Solution Consulting, participated in a panel covering SD-WAN 2.0: Defining Service Provider Business Models for Success and really illustrating the next evolution of the network at the edge. Tomosky and a group of experts from Comcast Business, ADVA Optical Networking, GTT, and MEF spoke on topics centered around the next phase of the edge evolution: uCPE and continued virtualization. Virtualization isn’t a new concept and as the panelists nodded in agreement, has already been proven by the simple adoption of virtualized servers at the edge. uCPE and edge virtualization is just an extension of an already proven concept.

Customers today are demanding more simplicity at the edge locations, whether it be a data center or branch location. uCPE brings that simplicity to the customer by allowing them to continue to virtualize their hardware and downsize their edge footprint. Network operators have the unique ability to leverage this technology with their customers while still “owning” the edge. However, customers get the sought-after ability to no longer be handcuffed to particular vendors – the virtual edge gives them vendor choice and flexibility.

Aaron Tomosky also presented in a solo session around why edge virtualization is the next big thing. The take away is really that organizations today are missing out on integrations at their edge. The network has traditionally been heavily hardware based and until SDN came into play, it was managed in a silo. Customers need to be integrated and have configurable, elastic performance from their networks. They expect automated resource placement side by side with a deep security posture. QOS gives companies the ability to integrate with their existing platforms today, like SolarWinds or ServiceNow. With custom APIs and custom configuration, automating and integrating processes is simple.

As we have learned at QOS, the industry is moving so quickly when it comes to developing new technologies for the customer’s edge networks. We have developed more custom solutions for our customer than we have cookie cutter ones – and that will continue. No network is the same and customers are demanding their network providers give them more flexibility and dependability than ever before. QOS gives that flexibility to our service provider partners and allows them to bring new solutions to their customers.