Close partnerships and collaboration will be essential to widespread NFV deployment.

While it’s still early days for NFV, the virtualization storm has been embraced by operators around the world with no signs of dissipating. But in that mad scramble to learn about virtualization, conduct lab tests and proofs of concept and even start on the operationalization phase, there are still a number of challenges and concerns.

At the top of many operators’ lists is confusion around standards activities and various ecosystems that have been put in place by vendors, industry groups and others with the aim of advancing NFV. Some believe standards are absolutely necessary while others say they slow down the progress of getting NFV into production. There is perhaps even more skepticism around the many open source groups that have cropped up in the past few years, with many in the industry scratching their heads as to why so many exist and if there will be a shakeout in the near future.

Controversy aside, what most agree on is that an open, standards-based ecosystem will be vital to NFV adoption, and given the steep learning curve surrounding NFV and the urgency with which many operators want to deploy it, close partnerships and collaboration will be required.

Room for Cooperation
Bringing NFV to life won’t be an easy task. It will require significant investment in human resources, time and of course money, but the tradeoff will come in the form of substantial benefits, including lower costs, improved time-to-market and increased revenue from new services.

Read the rest on NetCracker.com