For the last few years, virtualization has been a top priority for CIOs as they undergo large-scale IT transformation projects. While the IT infrastructure continues to evolve, virtualization is being embraced in other areas such as mobile networks.

Evidently, the driving force behind virtualizing mobile networks is cost optimization for operators that could deploy services in an elastic, scalable and flexible manner. They could get the best of breed vendors to interoperate on standard COTS (Common Off the shelf) servers without tying themselves to expensive and dedicated vendor specific hardware.

4G LTE Mobile Networks- It is widely deployed today, and consists of two distinct functional areas - The Radio access network (E-UTRAN) and the Evolved packet core (EPC). IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) is an allied subsystem that provides the ability to handle packetized voice and video calls thereby supporting VoLTE (Voice over LTE), Skype, and other services that are commonly used today.

Virtualizing the EPC requires moving several functional components such as subscriber databases, policy servers and gateways to one or more VMs (Virtual Machines) hosted as VNFs (Virtual Network Functions) in COTS servers. This is possible because each of these components comprises of protocols that are IP based and interconnects are 1G/10G/40G Ethernet links. The IMS network in addition to being IP-based has to effectively deal with predictable voice or video packets every few milliseconds.

vEPC (Virtual EPC) has become a reality after many successful trials worldwide (US, Asia,and Europe). The technical results coupled with reasonable commercial viability augurs well for strategically replacing the custom hardware based solutions that are deployed today. Many virtualized IMS components havealso been successfully demonstrated.