35% of Ops Plan to Deploy NFV This Year

"Though we're still in the early stages of a long-term transition to NFV-SDN architected networks, many carriers will be moving from proof-of-concept tests and lab evaluations to commercial deployments of NFV in 2015," wrote Michael Howard, senior research director for carrier networks at IHS.

"In fact, all major operators are either now deploying NFV or plan to within the next few years," he continued. "Providers believe that NFV and its SDN companion are a fundamental change in telecom network architecture that will deliver benefits in service agility and new revenue, operational efficiencies and capex savings."

Other findings indicate:

• 48% of carriers surveyed plan to evaluate NFV by the end of 2015.
• Barriers becoming more prominent as operators get closer to commercial deployment include products not being carrier grade and finding and training staff.
• The top NFV use cases respondent carriers plan to deploy in 2015-2016 include virtual enterprise CPE (vE-CPE), service chaining and virtual network platform as a service (VNPaaS).