VNFO...for Enterprises and Telcos

In its latest report, "The VNFO... Ripe for Change", Insight Research considers two major user profiles – enterprises and telcos. Enterprises as a group includes the enterprise end-user themselves as well as the system integrators that build and manage their networks. In-short, it includes everyone other than telcos that operate wireless and wireline wide area networks. The reason for such categorization is that the non-telco group as an end-user has a distinctive character when it comes to adaptiveness to virtualization. Typically, enterprises have a higher comfort level with virtualization due to their exposure to this construct in their IT networks. This comfort level extends to both the VM as well as the container eras.

Telcos are no strangers to virtualization either. They have traditionally been wary however of large-scale NFV deployments due to adverse risk-reward analysis in the days of NFV not being mature enough. With growing comfort levels however, this apprehension is gradually making way to determined deployments even among the most performance intensive and delay sensitive RAN NFs.

While the larger picture presents a tale of telcos being the larger market, the story varies for individual end-applications. There is a common strand running across end-applications - that of telcos feeling unburdened. The burden was attributable to the absence of a solid orchestrator. That obstacle is clearly out of the way now, allowing telcos to race ahead in full steam.