NFV - Service Consumption

As the telecommunications industry starts delivering on Network Function Virtualization (NFV) via delivery of Virtual Network Functions (VNF) there should be a consideration for the service consumption mechanism that is driving this industry.

Consider that startup players in the market are approaching this market segment from enabling developers to directly integrate with their systems.  As the network ecosystems have evolved to include demand based services, these new players are providing the means to directly consume services that have been historically managed services.

There is a direct parallel of this model with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.  They have build a platform and enhanced it over time to directly address the service consumption model.  As a demand based service, compute and storage have largely been commoditized, or in the vernacular of the Value Chain, they are utility services.  You pay for what you use.

Telecommunications carriers need to be aware of the conditions this placed on the entirety of the IT market.  It shifted major capabilities to Hybrid Cloud and may further shift the entirety of workload execution to this demand based service area before the next major scale out.

During this evolution, traditional managed services may not survive in their current state.  Further, the directional of OSS and BSS have almost always been northbound.  As the digital shift continues, these functions need to be both North and Southbound.

Finally, there cannot be enough emphasis on this, this is technology segregated by logic.  Policy Enforcement that is well understood and tied together from MANO Service Chaining to VIM and finally to the consumer needs to be a foundational part of the plan of service delivery, enabled and enacted upon by API and made available to the masses that will be in a position to consume it.

The evolution of this space is ripe for a lambda function like execution in its maturity.