F5’s Vision and Portfolio for Unlocking Potential in the Always-On, Fully-Connected World

Growth in Use Cases and Applications Takes Demands to New Levels

The relentless pace of innovation is driving developers and service providers to redefine how they bring

applications and services to users. Users’ demand for new applications is forcing a transformation away from

limited function, tightly integrated and proprietary solutions toward a more fluid, programmable, adaptable

service delivery environment. At the same time, competition for user engagement is fierce and operators need

to find ways to become dramatically more efficient while they are also accelerating their pace of innovation.

Recent studies shed light on the dramatic scale of these developments:

Consumption of video content by mobile users will increase at a 55 percent annual rate through 2020

and will represent 60 percent of all mobile traffic worldwide by that date.1

Peak mobile bandwidth per user globally will increase on average five times its current level by 2018.2

With the addition of Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable applications to the already-heavy use of

social networking, entertainment, eCommerce, web browsing, navigation services and the mix of

applications users consume on their mobile devices will add substantially to the processing intelligence

required by service infrastructures.3

The variety of devices and screens in users’ households will also increase the demand for bandwidth

and application intelligence in residential deployments, adding to requirements for performance,

flexibility, and efficiency as the services grow.4

1 Ericsson Mobility Report, June 2015.

2 Forecast of Mobile Users’ Traffic, ACG Research, February 2015.

3 Ericsson Mobility Report, June 2015.

4 Forecast of Residential Fixed Broadband Requirements, ACG Research, November 2014.

Accelerating the Transformation

to Virtual Network Services

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Figure 1. Device Type Bandwidth Requirement

Frameworks for Fueling Innovations

Significant work toward enabling this demanding mix of applications is being done on a number of levels

in service provider networking. First is in the sheer physics of communication. Developments range from

5G wireless and higher capacity networking in WiFi, near-field communication, and other wireless

applications to developments in fixed network communication for terabit-scale transmission and higher

capacity broadband access (optical, DSL, and cable).

Even more far-reaching innovations are occurring that will transform every level of service and

application delivery above the physical into a more agile, flexible, and efficient service delivery model.

These innovations borrow heavily from cloud computing. They involve abstraction, virtualization,

automation, and broad leverage of general-purpose hardware. Evolutions are occurring under the

umbrellas of software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), and service

orchestration. Each is essential to success in supporting new applications and to evolving networks into

the agile platforms they need to be moving forward.

The first transformation to software-defined networking involves simplifying and abstracting network

devices at Layers 1 (transmission) to 3 (Internet or packet routing). In general, the drive is to simplify,

make less costly, and make more agile and service-aware the networks applications use. A high-level

view of the transition is shown in Figure 2.

In the historical approach, devices such as routers and Ethernet switches have been developed with

tightly coupled custom hardware and a vendor’s own operating system and a closed control and

administrative environment. Moving forward, networks will employ larger percentages of general-

purpose merchant silicon and open network software. The control software will be abstracted and

centralized to make adaptation of the platforms to service delivery requirements more flexible. Results

of early studies and deployments indicate these outcomes are indeed likely to be true, as reductions of

50 percent or more in capital expenses and of 75 percent or more in operations expenses are being

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regularly documented in studies of SDN introduction in networks of varying size (including the largest of

network operators).

Figure 2. Transformation to SDN

In the historical approach, devices such as routers and Ethernet switches have been developed with

tightly coupled custom hardware and a vendor’s own operating system and a closed control and

administrative environment. Moving forward, networks will employ larger percentages of general-

purpose merchant silicon and open network software.

Simultaneously, a transformation is occurring in the design of value-adding network functions in the

broad network functions virtualization initiative. NFV is striving to apply the virtualization, abstraction,

and service automation lessons of cloud computing to value-adding application delivery functions that

have historically been delivered as customized appliances into service providers’ networks. Many of the

principles being used in NFV are similar to principles driving SDN. The differences are in the functions

being performed by the VNFs and the way they are inserted into the service delivery environments for

each application. Each one, a firewall, a deep packet inspection engine, a content caching function, has

its own place in a service in parallel with its underlying network. Evolving each VNF into a software-

based module deployable on demand as an application in a pool of virtualized computing resources

according to requirements is the goal. It is an essential transformation in meeting the scale-out, scale-

up, and service-aware deployment requirements operators have.

A high-level diagram of the transition to NFV is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Transition to NFV

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The final transformation is development of a unified service orchestration and management

environment operators can use to compose new service offerings and automate their instantiation in

the virtualized, software-driven environment of NFV and SDN. Orchestration systems translate the

service and business requirements of the applications from other systems, such as self-service portals

and operator service catalogues, and transform them into normalized descriptions usable across a wide

array of VNFs and networking domains ready to take their instructions from the orchestrator. A view of

orchestration in this context is shown Figure 4.

Figure 4. Development of Unified Service Orchestration

Upside of Transformation

Although it is clear the transformations described are being pursued as a technical means of enabling

the applications mentioned, it is also important to highlight the business motivations service providers

have for pursuing this transformation. Studies tend to divide the motivations into two primary

dimensions:

Time to results

Efficiency in results

Results on these dimensions depend on the flexibility, programmability, automation, and scale that are

core attributes of NFV, SDN, and orchestration. But it is these dimensions that unlock the operating

plans that are focused on embracing the innovations.

Accelerating Time to Results

The first benefit is typically seen as accelerating time to results. It is usually identified by achieving

increased revenue, decreased cost or both in the delivery of a new offering (IoT, mobile video endpoint,

etc.) at an earlier date. The essence is illustrated in Figure 5. A new offering based on, say, SDN, NFV and

orchestrated service deployment, is delivered at a cost B1, which is lower than the cost B of the service

based on a traditional design. The new service achieves higher revenues in the amount of A1, which are

higher than the revenues in the amount A, which is achievable in the traditional design. Because of

these lower costs and higher, more rapidly achieved revenues, the application based on the new design

attains an earlier time to results by a significant margin.

This relationship can be evaluated in a broad array of mobile, fixed, consumer, residential, and business

application scenarios, but the underlying nature of the advantage is the same. Solutions that enable

accelerated time to results based on their adoption of techniques that enable the improvement provide

service providers with a distinct advantage.

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Figure 5. Accelerating Time to Results

Efficiency of Virtualized Offerings

The second metric emphasized is the marginal efficiency of virtualized offerings compared to traditional

designs. This is illustrated in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Efficiency of Virtualized Offerings

Efficiency can be achieved in a variety of ways, including pay per use, capacity on demand or simply

deploying in smaller increments relative to the increments required by bulkier, less flexible platforms. In

the illustration the green curved line represents the actual demand an operator is experiencing for the

new application. The more rigid blue capacity addition line composed of occasional additions over time

introduces excess cost and lost revenue at different points because of the inability to align capacity and

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demand in a granular way. By contrast, with the elastic nature of the virtualized solution, the operator is

able to deploy on demand and incur costs at the time the demand occurs. Costs are optimized and user

satisfaction is achieved.

The implications of this difference are pervasive and profound. They are pervasive because they apply to

VNFs deployable at multiple points in an operator’s service delivery environment. And they are

profound because they show an irreversible advantage achieved in a virtualized deployment model

when the functions required by an application can be supported in that design.

F5’s Vision and Readiness for Empowering Transformations

F5 has fully realized the importance of enabling virtualized architectures for its service provider

customers and is pursuing a comprehensive program of achieving these results. The pillars on which its

strategy is based are illustrated in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Integrated SDN and NFV

The first pillar indicates broad adoption of virtual designs throughout F5’s portfolio. This is essential for

achieving the agility and efficiency desired in operators’ virtual network infrastructures and the widest

range of new revenue-generating service offerings. In pursuing it F5 has enabled the key offerings in its

portfolio—from firewalling to application acceleration, from network address translation to policy

enforcement—to run as software applications in the hypervisors and virtual machines most valued by

service providers in their virtual function infrastructures (Linux-based KVM and VMware-based ESXi

hypervisor platforms). In this way F5 is offering operators flexibility in their choice of environment for

virtualized service deliveries and flexibility in the way its virtual editions can be combined based on the

needs of the deployment. Maintaining compatibility of its virtual editions with its hardware-based

solutions already deployed also helps make the transformation to virtual platforms efficient and

manageable.

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The second pillar of F5’s strategy is abstraction of service and network functions and the terminology

used to manage them. A key impediment to operators achieving time to market and innovation goals in

the past has been the cumbersome toolset by platforms using a low-level control interface as well as

having to understand a different design for each product offering. Looking forward, operators need to

describe applications in simpler terms to make for fast provisioning and easier growth. By allowing

products to be described with easy-to-manage templates and streamlined terminology, F5 is making its

offerings less cumbersome for operators to deploy and apply to revenue-generating tasks.

A third dimension on which operators have placed high priority in charting their path to agility is

programmability of the platforms and solutions they are deploying. Programmability enables faster

introduction of new functionality and flexible adaptation of solutions to address operators’ needs. F5

has recognized the importance of this attribute in its offerings and has created a wide range of APIs to

support customers’ and partners’ ability to add functionality to every level (management, control, and

data planes of deployment) of their offerings. The value of this attribute in creating virtualized network

infrastructures cannot be overstated.

F5 understands that efficiencies in deployment are closely tied to use of service orchestration for

managing service life cycles. Although operators can achieve key benefits by simply moving to

virtualized and programmable infrastructures, they multiply those benefits by streamlining service

management with a service orchestration platform. F5 has made it simple for operators to deploy

solutions by enabling its virtual editions to integrate easily with the orchestration platforms operators

are most interested in supporting, including the OpenStack service management platform and VMware’s

vCenter management suite. As operators transition their network service infrastructures to more heavily

virtualized solutions, working seamlessly with their chosen service orchestration systems will only

become more important. F5 has embraced this point at its essence and is on the leading edge of the

market with the breadth of its orchestration platforms support.

While employing each of these pillars in implementing its strategy, F5 has also cultivated a broad

ecosystem of technology and go-to-market partners to increase the appeal of its offerings to operators.

Achieving versatility with SDN and NFV involves solution interoperability and close collaboration among

vendors in each area of focus. At each layer of the new virtual stack, from the underlying virtual network

to the virtual machines supporting the operation of products to the orchestration platforms automating

their deployment into service provider infrastructures, F5 has built a powerful family of relationships

that demonstrates the kind of focus on easing the operators’ deployments that operators highly value.

In addition to cultivating these valuable relationships F5 has also invested wisely in helping define key

standards in both SDN and NFV that will be central to the operation of the new virtual infrastructures.

One example of this forward-looking engagement is F5’s contributions to enhancements in networking

protocols that will be needed to flexibly and dynamically support virtualized network functions. This has

been done in its co-authorship of the Network Services Header (or NSH) specification in the Internet

Engineering Task Force, which will be heavily employed in service chaining for VNFs. F5 has also been an

active participant in the NFV Industry Specifications Working Groups that the world’s operators have

organized under European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s sponsorship during the past two

years. In this process F5 has not only helped solidify the standards that will be employed by VNFs for

resilient and high-performing operation, it has also worked closely with service providers and other

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vendors in testing the viability of the emerging NFV designs in proof-of-concept initiatives design to

advance the industry’s understanding of how the VNF deployments can best be approached.

Focusing on these priorities has yielded a powerful portfolio of best-in-class, high-performance virtual

network functions that enable F5 to play a critical role in the commercialization of compelling and

flexible NFV solutions that open up new revenue models for service providers. A view of how F5’s

portfolio of NVFs and related functionalities such as licensing management fits efficiently into the ETSI

NFV Reference Architecture is shown in Figure 8. The diagram illustrates the well-thought-out nature of

the F5 VNF portfolio, from its embrace of the elasticity of the virtual edition paradigm to its close

integration with both orchestration and virtual system infrastructures to the north and south of the

VNFs, respectively. F5’s thorough approach to partner ecosystem cultivation is captured by its partners

rounding out the full picture of NFV deliverables for operators on all dimensions of the virtual

infrastructure deployment.

Figure 8. F5's Portfolio in the ETSI NFV Reference Architecture

In Figure 9 and Figure 10 the versatility of the portfolio is illustrated by its use in two of the most

important use cases for creating innovative revenue services based on virtualized network functions.

First is enabling elastic business network and IT services using virtualized CPE. The pool of F5’s VNFs

made available to customers can be combined dynamically into behaviors relevant to each user and

application. Their availability as a dynamic function in the cloud makes it an order of magnitude more

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efficient for both service provider and end customer to use each function compared to running them as

separate physical platforms either on the customer’s premise or in operators’ COs and PoPs.

Figure 9. F5's VNFs Enabling vCPE Services

A second arena in which F5’s VNFs are well-suited to support is the burgeoning set of applications

mobile users are consuming. Because of the range of applications operators are deploying, critical

portions of their mobile infrastructures need to evolve quickly toward more versatile, scalable designs.

The focal point for much of this enhancement is operators’ Gi LANs, where per-subscriber and per-

application controls are implemented at the border of the Internet and operators’ general-purpose

networks and their mobile-access networks. As shown in Figure 9, the ability of the VNF to scale out, up

and down dynamically, and mix functions together in combinations tuned to the application are critical

for success. F5’s portfolio of VNFs, flexible support of SDN underlays and integration with orchestration

platforms northbound illustrates its virtual editions’ readiness to enable important mobile revenue

services quickly.

Figure 10. F5's VNFs Enabling Mobile Applications in the Gi LAN

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Studies of total cost of ownership and time to revenue performed on these two use cases over the past

year have regularly shown gains in the 80–90 percent range of improvement in operation expense costs

and time to revenue accelerations of 2xs and more, depending on the service, underscoring the

motivations operators have for adopting the new designs.

Ready to Accelerate

With its thorough, forward-looking vision and comprehensive approach to enabling deployment of

functions in flexible combinations with prominent ecosystem partners, F5 has shown itself well-

prepared to help operators accelerate their transition to virtualized network services. Its portfolio of

VNFs has the versatility, openness, and breadth of integration choices that will help operators achieve

their goals of becoming the agile service delivery companies with which their customers want to work.

With its proactive approach to architectural alignment and completeness of solution set in its library of

virtual editions, F5 has placed itself on the leading edge of the virtual functions wave.

About ACG Research: ACG Research is an analyst and consulting company that focuses in the networking and

telecom space. We offer comprehensive, high-quality, end-to-end business consulting and syndicated research

services. Copyright © 2015 ACG Research. www.acgcc.com.