Netcracker is looking to take some of the pain and complexities out of NFV deployments with its new telco cloud-as-a-service software stack.
The vendor, which has enjoyed success working with service providers in the OSS/BSS space, announced on Monday its Netcracker Business Cloud software stack as a means to help service providers roll out cloud-based SDN and NFV services and applications at a faster clip.
While large service providers, most notably AT&T and Telefónica, have created their own software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualized networks—albeit with the help of open source in some cases— a large chunk of carriers have become bogged down in their virtualization journeys.
"Netcracker is continuing the trend of the OSS/BSS suppliers in leveraging an ecosystem of VNF and NFV partners to facilitate the onboarding of new applications," said Lee Doyle, principal analyst at Doyle Research. "This will assist their CSP customers with the process of modernizing their back-office systems to improve their agility in deploying new revenue producing applications."
Netcracker is seeking to remedy the time, cost and complexities that carriers typically face when rolling out their cloud-based applications and virtualized services.
On that note, Netcracker's modular software stack includes pre-integrated virtual network functions (VNFs), orchestration and management tools, OSS/BSS systems, portals and a digital marketplace to ramp up the time to market for service providers.
“The business, sales and marketing organizations within CSPs that are responsible for B2B revenue growth have often been frustrated by the slow pace of network and IT transformation that is holding them back from quickly offering a new and diverse set of connectivity and value-added services to the B2B market,” said Sanjay Mewada, chief strategy officer at Netcracker, in a prepared statement. “CSPs now have a choice to start offering virtual services and cloud-based enterprise applications much more quickly, with flexible commercial and operational models.”
Netcracker Business Cloud features deployment flexibility using Netcracker’s cloud or a multicloud environment, comprised of a service provider’s private cloud and public clouds with Netcracker handling the end-to-end service.
For large service providers, Netcracker Business Cloud offers the flexibility to host their solutions in a single location and deliver it as a service to their affiliates, which in turn allows the carriers to offer various virtualized services to their end customers at a faster rate.
The ability to work in cloud environments gives Netcracker a leg up among vendors who offer single solution SDN and NFV-based products and applications, although Huawei in particular has been talking up its cloud-based approach for several years.
RELATED: F5 takes aim at simplifying NFV for service providers with new VNFs
Earlier this summer, F5 Networks announced an NFV solution that also included its own prebuilt VNFs and its VNF Manager. VMware has also made a concerted effort to gain more traction in the NFV telco sector while also offering cloud-based services to enterprise customers.
Last week, Netcracker took part in the launch of Telefonica Movistar’s NextWan platform in Mexico. NextWAN network services, which include SD-WAN and other services, are hosted and delivered in Netcracker’s Business Cloud platform.
Netcracker has other customers that are using its Netcracker Business Cloud that it plans to announce in the coming weeks.