Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) was born out of economic necessity. Communication Service Providers (CSPs) needed a radically different way to build networks and deliver services to compete with agile, web-scale rivals and to cope with ever-increasing traffic demand and sluggish revenue growth. By replacing proprietary physical network appliances with software-based virtual network functions (VNFs) or cloud native network functions (CNFs) that run on generic hardware “in the cloud,” CSPs have sought more flexible networks that not only drive growth through rapid service innovation, but also deliver significant cost savings from commodity hardware and operational efficiency.
However, so far, current NFV implementations have yet to deliver the necessary scale of cost savings and new revenues. Simply deploying VNFs is not enough.
