Abranet recently interviewed NTT Com’s Michael Wheeler and posted an article on its website (in Portuguese). Below is the English translation.
By: Roberta Prescott – 03/18/2016
Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) are two innovations that have started appearing on the internet providers’ radar. In an exclusive interview to Abranet, Michael Wheeler, the Vice-Executive President of the IP networks global unit from NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) advocated that the adoption of these practices will make business more efficient.
With the increase of data traffic, the main question is how to manage the need to deploy increasingly more infrastructure and to obtain return over the continuous network investment. Wheeler described this conjecture as a “good challenge”, since it points to a growing, and not shrinking, market – however, Wheeler highlighted the high cost of this constant update.
This path, according to him, goes through the adoption of virtualization technologies, such as SDN and NFV, which are beneficial for the business and may help to manage the budget. Another challenge is to assess the actual demand for capacity, neither underestimating nor overestimating it, in order to understand how to address it properly.
Although the adoption of such architectures are not part of the actual reality of many internet providers, mainly the smaller sized ones, Wheeler believes that ISPs must include this technology in their planning and not fail to deploy them. “These automation tools are expensive, but if companies do not take advantage of their capacities, they will not succeed in the long term”, he pointed out. “This matter is much more about when to adopt it than if they should adopt, because not doing so is a sure path to failure”.
Wheeler also indicates that ISPs must start with a small portion of the networking and gradually evolve.
In 2011, NTT Com launched its Point of Presence (PoP) in São Paulo to strengthen its local action with internet service providers (ISPs) and internet content providers (ICPs).
NTT Com believes that, during this year, the communication infrastructure in Brazil will be tested once again, this time because of the Olympic Games. “The World Cup 2014 generated a data and video content volume never seen before and the Olympic Games are expected to surpass this number and records”, says Wheeler, adding that the function of international operators will be crucial to attend connectivity demands.