This update to our ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’ series focuses on Asia-Pacific, alongside European and North American data to March 2018. Telcos in developed Asian markets have made a great start, and the region has outstripped Europe and North America in live SDN / NFV deployments - but can NFV scale to Asia as a whole?

Introduction

Welcome to the second update of the ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’

This report is the third analytical report in the ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’ series and is intended as an accompaniment to the second update of the Tracker Excel spreadsheet (dated March 2018).

The update provides a comprehensive set of data on live, commercial deployments of NFV and SDN in the Asia-Pacific market. Under ‘Asia-Pacific’, we include all of the countries of Central, Southern and South-East Asia, along with Oceania. In addition to the new set of data for Asia-Pacific, the spreadsheet contains updated and revised data on deployments in the European and North American regions.

In June 2018, the data set and analysis will be extended to all other regions worldwide, with the aim of providing the industry’s most comprehensive, authoritative source of information on live deployments of NFV and SDN.

Scope, definitions and importance of the data

Detailed explanation of the scope of the information provided in the Tracker, definitions of terms (including how we define a live ‘deployment’ and definitions of frequently used NFV / SDN acronyms) and an account of why we think it is important to track the progress of NFV / SDN are provided in the first analytical report of the series – so we will not repeat them here.

Analysis of the Asia-Pacific data set

Overall data and trends: Asia-Pacific is the largest global market for NFV

We have gathered data on 102 live, commercial deployments of NFV and SDN in Asia-Pacific between 2012 and 2018. These were completed by 33 telcos, including all of the major operators in China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Deployments have been more limited in India: seven in total, including two global implementations by Tata Communications. Altogether, the data includes information on 203 known Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), functional sub-components and supporting infrastructure elements that have formed part of these deployments.

This means that Asia-Pacific is the largest market for NFV and SDN, measured purely in terms of number of deployments. The Asia-Pacific totals outstrip the updated numbers for both Europe (89 deployments and 182 VNFs / functional components) and North America (62 deployments and 126 VNFs / functional components). The number of operators that have completed deployments is also higher than that in Europe or North America.

Contents:

• Executive Summary
• Asia-Pacific is the leading global SDN / NFV market
• Introduction
• Welcome to the second update of the ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’
• Scope, definitions and importance of the data
• Analysis of the Asia-Pacific data set
• Overall data and trends: Asia-Pacific is the largest global market for NFV
• SDN, SD-WAN and core network functions have driven the growth
• Operator trends: Innovators lead the way, closely followed by the Chinese giants
• Vendor trends: SD-WAN and vCPE vendors lead the way
• Conclusion

Figures:

• Figure 1: Total NFV and SDN deployments in Asia-Pacific, 2012 to 2018
• Figure 2: Asia-Pacific deployments by higher-level category, 2014 to 2018
• Figure 3: European deployments by higher-level category, 2014 to 2018
• Figure 4: North American deployments by higher-level category, 2014 to 2018
• Figure 5: Leading VNFs and functional components deployed in Asia-Pacific
• Figure 6: Leading Asia-Pacific operators by number of NFV / SDN deployments
• Figure 7: Leading vendors by number of deployments

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