Learnings from Operators SDN and NFV Transformation Study

Service providers are transforming their business using NFV based services and SDN enabled networks. But the pace of transformation has been slow. To find out why, Cisco recently conducted a study to understand the progress and challenges that SPs are facing as they go through SDN and NFV transformation. Even though most operators interviewed were at an early stage of the journey, we identified some of the key success factors:

Senior Management must buy in because success depends on transforming the business not just evolving the technology

Creating a more innovative and agile culture is needed to truly embrace NFV/SDN

Boosting software skills is critical to managing and running the virtualized network

Moving to a DevOps service delivery model requires tight linkage between product management, network planning, operations and IT

Educating customers on the value proposition of new services enabled by SDN/NFV drives their adoption and success

Building the business case makes selling the value of the services easier

Over the next few weeks, we will share with you a lot more details from this study. We will cover the following areas in detail:

The transformation pathways that these operators took

The top 10 challenges they faced

How operators overcame the challenges

Educating customers on the value proposition is critical to success. To highlight the value of SDN/NFV, we’ll share the key findings from another study of 350 large, medium and small businesses globally. That study shows that by 2019 the spend in cloud will grow from 5% to 16% of total ICT spend. That will lead to more than $116 B overall opportunity in Virtualized ICT services and over $7.6 B opportunity in SD-WAN services for you. SDN & NFV drive these opportunities because they bring your business customers the flexibility and agility they value, as shown in the responses from every region in the study. To learn more about these opportunities, check out the ITaaS webinar on ICT revenue opportunities. Stay tuned for more.