Jasco Carrier Solutions has debuted a virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) solution for the local market.
The solution is aimed at Internet service providers and small to medium-sized enterprises, and will reduce the cost, time and effort involved in network provisioning and management.
Martin Ferreira, executive head of Jasco Carrier Solutions, says virtual CPE solutions are a natural evolution of current physical on-premises CPE solutions. "But they are very new from a technology perspective, and adoption has been slow in South Africa".
He says many of the larger players are heavily invested in legacy solutions and are reluctant to switch, particularly as vCPE mimics MPLS, which is a strong revenue stream for tier one and two providers, and will essentially phase out this offering.
"For others considering vCPE, the software licence fees are considerable. In addition, moving to vCPE requires a significant shift in operations and people, albeit one that will deliver many cost and efficiency advantages."
According to him, the solution will address cost and infrastructure issues, giving network providers and enterprises easy access to vCPE features and lowering barriers to adoption.
How it works
Jasco's vCPE employs network function virtualisation and software defined networking (SDN) technologies to virtualise network service provisioning and management. It eliminates the initial costs involved with placing CPE equipment on premises and physically servicing it. Moreover, a single vCPE can manage multiple vendors' networking technologies and appliances, says Ferreira.
Network service providers currently need a lot of equipment to service their clients, he says. This would include a server, and several boxes - for a firewall, for deep packet inspection, for switching to route traffic, and several others from different vendors to enable the provider to switch and manage services on and over specific equipment. "For each box, the provider pays a licence fee and needs to train IT staff to support the product."
Jasco's vCPE has of these loaded on to it, removing the need to maintain fleets of technicians trained on different technologies. "It's all in one box," Ferreira explains.
The solution plugs into the network at the customer premises. "The NFV and SDN technologies turn the CPE into a simple Layer 2 forwarding device that connects the customer to the service provider's network, enabling the provider to virtually provision the services required by the customer via the vCPE."
NFV replaces dedicated network appliances with software running on servers, and SDN adds dynamic intelligence to the NFV network, using open protocols to add control at the edges of the network to provide access to network switches and routers that previously used closed proprietary firmware, he adds. "SDN helps provision and manage virtual network functions and traffic loads."
Ensuring integration
Jasco will sell the vCPE solution as a service, loading the software on the client's server and auto provisioning services through remote orchestration. It is currently in pilot at a major client. "We are testing different hardware and ensuring integration with key branded solutions," says Ferreira.
"Our goal is to tailor this solution to address the realities of the South African market in terms of functionality and pricing."
The solution will also be sold outright, although Ferreira says this is unlikely to be as cost effective as making use of the vCPE as a service where Jasco's bulk licensing of SDN and NFV software offers users a price break.
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