Handy Tips from your SP Peers – Top 10 SDN/NFV Transformation Challenges

As part of our SDN and NFV study, we asked service providers what they considered to be their biggest challenges in their transformation. We have synthesized their responses and will share some of the top ones with you here. We assumed that the top challenges your peers faced would be technology focused. But what we found out was that most of their challenges were around operations, organization and skillset.

At the very top of their list was the difficulty in changing the culture across the organization to a new software-centric model. Early engagement with the workforces and sharing the value of SDN & NFV is key to bringing everyone onboard to make the transition easier.

Service providers shared that their lack of skills in both software and virtualization was a major barrier to their efforts, as well. To ease the skillset gap, they recommend partnering with universities to retrain employees and hiring more software engineers.

Organizational siloes are also a challenge that hindered many of them from working across existing organizational boundaries. SPs recommend creating a core team with members from various organizations to plan the transformation. Using a steering team to ensure continuous communication across the organization helps maintain alignment as you move forward. Also, implementing agile product development and management practices improves collaboration among internal organizations.

You can get the full list of the top 10 challenges from the study. Let us know if you are facing these same issues. We have a set of recommended actions to help you overcome these challenges based on the steps your peers have taken.

To speed up the adoption of SDN and NFV in your network, our Open Network Architecture offers a broad set of automation solutions like the Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) to make the transition easier.