Summary Bullets:
- Over time, we’ve seen operator thinking around NFV as a tool for saving money (OpEx and CapEx) vs. making money (new revenue generation) shift towards the latter.
- Most recently, operator and vendor messaging around NFV monetization was prominently on display at Layer 123’s NFV World Congress.
- The “savings vs. monetization” dynamic, however, is not an either/or decision, potentially confounding vendor agendas to drive broader thinking around monetization and service orchestration.
Last week, we released our wrap-up of insights from Layer123’s NFV World Congress. You can take a look at that analysis here: Layer123 NFV World Congress: Trying Hard to Find a Monetization Story for NFV. Included in that analysis was a potential contradiction. On the one hand, the event highlighted operator and vendor thinking around the use of NFV to generate new revenues vs. saving money on network rollouts and operations. On the other hand, specific network functions are often rolled out by individual business units with their own narrow agendas, which may not always include new revenue generation. One vendor, in particularly, framed this in terms of orchestration and business processes. Operators approaching NFV from an orchestration and business enablement standpoint, the vendor argued, are in a much better position to leverage the technology for truly evolving their networks vs. maintaining their current operations with new gear. In many cases, they continued, it’s been an uphill battle to get this message understood by operators looking at NFV in tactical terms. Continue reading “NFV World Congress: NFV Monetization vs. Network Pragmatism (aka the AT&T Paradox)”