Accedian goes hybrid NFV in carrier QoS product

Virtualises CPE to cut deployment cost

Rather than pull out all the stops on network function virtualisation (NFV), telcos would like to stage their implementations one piece at a time, according to Canadian vendor Accedian Networks.

That's the rationale behind the approach the company announced late last week, in which it wants to offer an enterprise-to-data-centre connectivity solution implemented as a virtual network function.

The release comes in the form of its SkyLIGHT VCX product, which marketing veep Scott Sumner told Vulture South explained is designed to act as a high-accuracy collector of network data at the boundary between customer and service provider.

As a virtual CPE, the solution provides SLA reporting, bandwidth regulation, policy enforcement, and service quality analytics for hybrid cloud connections.

Sumner said the virtualised version of SkyLIGHT self-contained, so carriers can deploy without having to surround the system with a full orchestration platform if they're not ready, and get the same functionality as they would with a more familiar edge device at much lower cost.

“We made the decision to virtualise the devices, but customers need to have the precision of measurements for enterprise-grade SLAs”, Sumner said.

While the architecture Accedian's FPGA-based product has been preserved, Sumner said, it's now in an edge unit that only costs a couple of hundred dollars.

It also means operators don't have to devote scarce devops resources to the virtual device, and functions can be progressively moved into the operator's network over time.

As enterprises and carriers move to Layer 2 connectivity for cloud services, Sumner believes the need for routers to act as the customer demarcation point will decline, since that function can also be virtualised into the operator cloud. ®