Tag: SASE

What do enterprises want from telcos?

Enterprises are striving for success…

All enterprises want success. The language and specifics that define this may differ across sectors – but the underlying drivers are the same. They include financial, strategic, operational and market-facing factors, as described below.

Success drivers

enterprise

Source: STL Partners

…against a new, transformed backdrop

Demand and supply forces have changed: Customers expect more, but resources are increasingly constrained. Enterprises are pondering the range of new technologies and practices to help them meet the challenges of a Coordination Age:

  • Coordinating outcomes and experiences for customers
  • Collaborating to enable the delivery of more value
  • Bridging the digital and physical worlds

The Coordination Age

Enterprise

Source: STL Partners

Telcos’ national scope and assets mean they are well placed to participate in some of the new opportunity areas of the Coordination Age. Although technologies and applications running over the telcos’ connectivity are often developed at global scale, how they are implemented within local and national markets is likely to vary from one country to the next, owing to regulatory constraints and how these have shaped the structure and priorities of the market. Telcos can help enterprises navigate this path.

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Do enterprises believe telcos can help?

What enterprises think of telcos depends on their tech maturity, their knowledge and experience of telcos, the telcos’ technology capability and the sector that they are in, as shown below.

Factors influencing enterprise consideration

 

enterprisesSource: STL Partners

Telcos must work to understand enterprise needs in their specific markets and how they are best placed to serve those needs.

Table of contents

  • Executive summary
  • Introduction
  • Understanding telco enterprise strategies
  • Seven enterprise growth opportunities

Related research

STL Partners has a research solution focused on growing enterprise revenues. Reports that could be of interest include:

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Telco cloud deployment tracker: What is happening with SD-WAN in 2023?

What is happening with SD-WAN in 2023?

The state of the SD-WAN market has changed significantly since the 2010s, when it emerged as prominent driver of telco cloud activity, centred on North America. SD-WAN remains strong, with nearly a quarter of telco cloud deployments in 2022 having SD-WAN as the primary purpose, and has spread across the globe.

Every update of the Telco cloud deployment tracker includes a review of the confirmed or completed telco cloud deployments up to the end of the preceding quarter, and a deep dive into a significant trend revealed in the data. SD-WAN, SASE, and the evolution towards NaaS is in the spotlight in this update.

SD-WAN: A virtualisation success story

SD-WAN is an example of where a technology trend – Network Functions Virtualisation and Software Defined Networking (NFV and SDN) – fed directly into a successful commercial product. It comprises a bundle of Virtualised Network Functions (VNFs), such as routing, WAN optimisation and firewall, placed under centralised SDN control to deliver optimised, application-specific traffic management and prioritisation across the multi-domain, multi-technology enterprise network.

Initially developed and marketed as an overlay service by ISVs – a purely software-based service managed independently of the underlying network platforms – SD-WAN started to be widely delivered by telcos from 2017 as part of their managed enterprise networking portfolios. Deployments in this first wave of telco SD-WAN peaked in 2018, with 45 deployments focused on SD-WAN in that year.

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SASE is a response to the increasing cloudification of SD-WAN

Telcos have not driven innovation in the SD-WAN field. In terms of number of directly served enterprise customers and technology evolution, vendors dominate. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is one such vendor-led solution. It combines SD-WAN with several cloud-based security functions designed to protect against cyber attacks as network traffic crosses the borders between private and public networks and clouds.

Total number of SD-WAN and SASE deployments, 2016-2023

Source: STL Partners

SASE first emerged as a distinct offering in July 2019; but telcos lagged, and the first deployments by telcos were recorded only in 2021.

The increased focus on cloud-delivered security reflects the growing cloudification of WAN services themselves, with larger enterprises running application workloads and traffic across multiple clouds and bypassing the telco WAN altogether.

Related research

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Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker: Open RAN deep dive

Telco Cloud: Open RAN is a work in progress

This report accompanies the latest release and quarterly update of STL Partners ‘Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker’ database. This contains data on deployments of VNFs (Virtual Network Functions), CNFs (cloud-native network functions) and SDN (Software Defined Networking) in the networks of the leading telcos worldwide. In this update we have added some additional categories to the database to reflect the different types of virtualised / open RAN:

  1. Open RAN / O-RAN: Fully open, disaggregated, virtualised / cloud-native, with CU / DU split
  2. vRAN: Virtualised CU/DU, with open interfaces but implemented as an integrated, single-vendor platform
  3. Cloud RAN: Single-vendor, virtualised / centralised BU, or CU only, with proprietary / closed interfaces

Cloud RAN is the most limited form of virtualised RAN: It is based on porting part or all of the functionality of the legacy, appliance-based BU into a Virtual Machine. vRAN and open RAN are much more significant, in both technology and business-model terms, breaking open all parts of the RAN to more competition and opportunities for innovation.

Accordingly, the report presents data on only open RAN and vRAN deployments however a granular analysis of each category of RAN deployment can be carried out using the Telco Cloud Tracker tool.

Access our online Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker tool here

Download the additional file for the full dataset of Telco Cloud deployments

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Open RAN and vRAN deployments, 2018 – 2022

Open-RAN-Deployments-Apr-2021-STL-Partners

Source: STL Partners

Open RAN and vRAN

Both Open RAN and vRAN are virtualised (with the exception of NTT DoCoMo as outlined in the report), but ‘open RAN’ implies full disaggregation of the different parts of the RAN (hardware, software and radio), and open interfaces between them. By contrast, vRAN incorporates the open interfaces but is generally deployed as a pre-integrated, single-vendor solution: hardware, software and radio supplied by the same vendor.

To date, there have been significantly more open RAN than vRAN deployments. But vRAN is emerging as a potentially competitive alternative to pure open RAN: offering the same operational benefits and – in theory – multi-vendor openness, but without the overhead of integrating components from multiple vendors, and a ‘single neck to choke’ if things go wrong. Deployments in 2020 were mostly small-scale and / or 4G, including trials which continued to carry live traffic after the trial period came to an end.

The stark contrast between 2021 and 2022 reflects a slight hiatus in commercial deployments as work intensified around integration and operational models, trials, performance optimisation, and cost economics. However, major deployments are expected in 2022, including greenfield networks 1&1 Drillisch (Germany) and DISH (US), Verizon, Vodafone UK, and MTN (Africa and ME).

Scope and content of the Tracker

The data in the latest update of our interactive tool and database covers the period up to March 2022, although reference is made in the report to events and deployments after that date. The data is drawn predominantly from public-domain information contained in news releases from operators and vendors, along with reputable industry media.

We apply the term ‘deployment’ to refer to the total set of VNFs, CNFs or SDN technology, and their associated management software and infrastructure, deployed at an operator – or at one or more of an operator’s opcos or natcos – in order to achieve a defined objective or support particular services (in the spreadsheet, we designate these as the ‘primary purpose’ of the deployment). For example, this could be:

  • to deploy a 5G standalone core
  • to launch a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) service
  • or to construct a ‘telco cloud’ or NFV infrastructure (NFVi): a cloud infrastructure platform on which virtualised network services can be introduced and operated.

The Tracker is provided as an interactive tool containing line-by-line analysis of over 900 individual deployments of VNFs, CNFs or SDN technology, which can be used to drill down by:

  • Region where deployed
  • Operator
  • Technology vendor
  • Primary purpose
  • Type of telco cloud function deployed
  • …and more filters

Telco Cloud Trial Deployment Tracker

Take a look at the trial of our interactive tool with live, commercial deployments of VNFs, CNFs and SDN technologies worldwide

Previous telco cloud tracker releases

Each new release of the tracker is global, but is accompanied by an analytical report which focusses on trends in given regions from time to time:

 

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Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker: 5G standalone and RAN

Telco cloud 2.0, fuelled by 5G standalone and RAN, is on the starting grid

This report accompanies the latest release and update of STL Partners ‘Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker’ database. This contains data on deployments of VNFs (Virtual Network Functions), CNFs (cloud-native network functions) and SDN (Software Defined Networking) in the networks of the leading telcos worldwide. It builds on an extensive body of analysis by STL Partners over the past nine years on NFV and SDN strategies, technology and market developments.

Access our Telco Cloud Tracker here

Download the additional file for the full dataset of Telco Cloud deployments

Scope and content of the Tracker

The data in the latest update of our interactive tool and database covers the period up to September 2021, although reference is made in the report to events and deployments after that date. The data is drawn predominantly from public-domain information contained in news releases from operators and vendors, along with reputable industry media.

We apply the term ‘deployment’ to refer to the total set of VNFs, CNFs or SDN technology, and their associated management software and infrastructure, deployed at an operator – or at one or more of an operator’s opcos or natcos – in order to achieve a defined objective or support particular services (in the spreadsheet, we designate these as the ‘primary purpose’ of the deployment). For example, this could be:

  • to deploy a 5G standalone core
  • to launch a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) service
  • or to construct a ‘telco cloud’ or NFV infrastructure (NFVi): a cloud infrastructure platform on which virtualised network services can be introduced and operated.

The Tracker is provided as an interactive tool containing line-by-line analysis of over 900 individual deployments of VNFs, CNFs or SDN technology, which can be used to drill down by:

  • Region where deployed
  • Operator
  • Technology vendor
  • Primary purpose
  • Category of NFV/SDN technology deployed
  • …and more filters

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5G standalone (SA) will hit an inflection point in 2022

5G standalone (SA) core is beginning to take off, with 19 deployments so far expected to be completed in 2022. The eventual total will be higher still, as will that of NSA core, as NSA 5G networks continue to be launched. As non-standalone (NSA) cores are replaced by SA, this will result in another massive wave of core deployments – probably from 2023/4 onwards.

Standalone 5G vs non-standalone 5G core deployments

STL-5G-standalone-core-cloud-tracker-2021

Source: STL Partners

 

Previous telco cloud tracker releases

Each new release of the tracker is global, but is accompanied by an analytical report which focusses on trends in given regions from time to time:

Enter your details below to request an extract of the report

Delivering on SD-WAN: How to choose the right partners

SD-WAN has been made in North America…

65% of the North American operators featured in our Telco Cloud Tracker had deployed SD-WAN by the end of 2020

By contrast, 49% Asia-Pacific-based telcos had launched SD-WAN in their region by the same time and 44% European telcos were offering SD-WAN within Europe

As this market matures operators that are new to the market, or seeking to expand their services internationally, should choose an SD-WAN platform that will enable them to differentiate in their local markets or play to the telcos strengths.

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Challenges for telcos considering introducing SD-WAN

  1. Lack of relevant skills or experience: telcos worry about risks of ‘outsourcing’ a significant part of their WAN services, operations and infrastructure to SD-WAN vendor; and about integration with BSS / OSS etc.
    • Leading SD-WAN vendors collaborate closely with telcos to facilitate integration of their platforms with telcos’ networks and services
    • SD-WAN platforms provide management interfaces that are easy for non-technical staff to operate, and offer visibility into application workflows and network KPIs
  2. How to differentiate SD-WAN service: how to offer USPs for the local market and differentiate from competitors
    • Ensure you choose an SD-WAN platform that suits the key needs of your customer base (see competitive analysis in next section)
    • Differentiation can also be achieved through the services telcos and vendors offer around SD-WAN products, e.g. good local market and language support
  3. Absence of appropriate infrastructure, facilities and networks: e.g. lack of fixed broadband networks; insufficient SD-WAN platform support for LTE / 5G
    • Many SD-WAN platforms offer LTE and 5G connectivity mainly as a back-up to IP-MPLS and fixed broadband. But many telcos, especially in emerging markets, serve enterprise sites through FWA. How well do platforms support this?
    • Many SD-WAN platforms rely on redundant connectivity to cloud-based hubs: are these always available for telcos serving remote areas?
  4. Risk of cannibalising enterprise revenues and compromising ROI from existing products and assets: e.g. IP-MPLS; IP-VPN; dedicated Internet; etc.
    • Telcos can offer different classes of SD-WAN at different price points, inc. overlay-only services to clients that want them
    • SD-WAN now seen as a value-add to IP-MPLS, for which a premium can be charged: can be integrated with telcos’ managed services offerings

How to assess the different SD-WAN platforms?

How to assess SD-WAN paltforms

Source: STL Partners

The rest of this report includes a competitive analysis of key SD-WAN platform players and how they can enable telcos’ to meet enterprise customer needs and future proof their SD-WAN investments.

Table of Contents

  • Executive Summary
  • What are the challenges to introducing SD-WAN
  • Assessing different SD-WAN platforms
    • Cisco
    • VMWare
    • Fortinet
    • Versa Networks
    • Palo Alto
    • Silver Peak
    • Juniper
    • Aryaka
  • A framework for selecting and implementing SD-WAN platforms

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