It is very evident that Software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) is on the rise. Not a day goes by, without some new statistic, survey or trend being announced that points to the rapid growth in SDN and NFV deployments. Service providers around the world, particularly in India, believe that SDN and NFV will help them to succeed as customer demand increases for more flexible networks and services.

In India, enterprises are showing growing interest in SDN and NFV. According to Gartner research, the Indian server, storage and networking market stands at approximately $2.3 billion of this market value, five to ten percent is SDN centric. According to IDC, the SDN market in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan), which consists of spending from the enterprise and cloud service provider segments, is set to grow from $6.2 million in 2013 to over $1 billion by 2018. With all this research and interest around to move to virtualized networks, it is important to understand not only the expected benefits of SDN and NFV, but the importance of service assurance in order to achieve these benefits.

SDN/NFV Benefits
One of the promises of SDN and NFV is the ability to lower ongoing Opex and Capex costs through the commoditization of hardware. By deploying networks that are simpler to configure and control, these architectures help to speed configuration and adaptation and, in turn, reduce the time it takes to rollout and assure new services. In addition, SDN and NFV networks will deliver improved network performance by centralizing and separating the control logic to make better traffic decisions. These new virtualized networks promise an increase in flexibility and agility for networks to make them more programmable, dynamic and more architecturally simplistic. Even with all these benefits, there are equally significant risks including the challenge of service assurance at a time where it is more necessary than it ever was with traditional networks.

The Need for Advanced Service Assurance for SDN/NFV
The current transition to virtual services has been primarily focused on network architecture and orchestration. The next area of focus will need to be on operationalizing the virtual networks and that of assuring the performance and availability of these virtual services. There is more to the transition than deployment, fulfillment and orchestration. Service assurance and performance management is an area of great importance that must be taken into consideration as SDN/NFV services are being deployed. Companies need to take into consideration how they are going to monitor and assure their networks as legacy and virtual networks co-exist in this new hybrid environment that will be the norm for the foreseeable future.