ETSI ISG NFV has recently published the white paper “Management and Orchestration of the Telco Cloud: The Role of NFV-MANO and Its Added Value”.

The white paper makes a strong case for the critical role of NFV-MANO in the Telco Cloud. It argues that NFV-MANO's core functionalities, along with ongoing enhancements, are essential for building a stable, efficient, and sustainable Telco Cloud ecosystem.

The telecommunications industry is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by the shift to Telco Cloud architectures. This evolution, spurred by Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), is changing how mobile networks are operated and managed.

NFV has emerged to address the limitations of traditional network management, which struggled with manual processes, scaling issues, and a lack of interoperability. The core aim of NFV is to use virtualization technologies to simplify management, ease integration, enable dynamic network configuration, and boost network stability.

Now, the industry is increasingly focused on cloud-native principles, leveraging both virtualization and containerization to build more modern, scalable, and flexible telecom solutions. This is where NFV-MANO (Management and Orchestration) steps in as a critical framework.

What is NFV-MANO?

The ETSI NFV-MANO framework is essential for the lifecycle management of virtualized and containerized network functions and network services. It ensures that network services can be efficiently deployed, configured, scaled, and optimized within the NFV infrastructure (NFVI).

NFV-MANO orchestrates the various components of the Telco Cloud, ensuring they work together harmoniously. This involves managing everything from individual virtual network function (VNF) instances to the underlying network infrastructure.

One key aspect that NFV and NFV-MANO address is bridging the gap between the use of cloud computing and virtualization/cloudification technologies with telecom network requirements, in the process of network operators digitally transforming their networks by "softwarizing" them. And because of the standards nature of ETSI NFV-MANO, this transformation can be supported for longer term while addressing the requirements of network operators to deploy and maintain networks across several generations.

Key Benefits of NFV-MANO

The white paper highlights several key benefits of using NFV-MANO:

• Abstraction and Simplification: NFV-MANO provides an abstraction layer that hides the complexity of network operations, making it easier to integrate with OSS (Operations Support Systems).
• Automation and Orchestration: It automates the deployment and management of VNFs, whether they are in VMs or containers, and orchestrates network services that combine both types.
• Resource Efficiency: NFV-MANO enables efficient resource allocation, preventing both over-provisioning (wasting resources) and underutilization (leading to poor performance).
• Vendor Agnosticism: By providing standardized interfaces, NFV-MANO helps to avoid vendor lock‑in, giving telecom operators more flexibility in choosing their technology solutions.
• Cloud-Native Alignment: NFV-MANO is evolving to support cloud-native principles, integrating with technologies like Kubernetes to manage containerized network functions.

Addressing the Challenges of Cloud-Native Telco

The white paper doesn't shy away from the challenges that come with the cloud-native transformation of telecom networks.

Some of the key challenges include:

• Orchestration Complexity: Managing the interplay between different orchestration frameworks and open-source solutions can be complex.
• End-to-End Automation: Achieving true end-to-end automation across all network operations remains a significant hurdle.
• Interoperability: Ensuring that different systems and solutions can work together seamlessly is crucial to avoid fragmentation and vendor lock-in.
• Hybrid Cloud Operations: Many operators are moving to hybrid cloud models, which adds complexity in terms of management scopes and interactions between different cloud environments.

NFV-MANO's Role in Overcoming Challenges

The white paper emphasizes that NFV-MANO provides mechanisms to address these challenges. For instance, its abstraction layer helps to simplify orchestration complexity, and its standardized interfaces promote interoperability.

The white paper also acknowledges the importance of open-source solutions in the Telco Cloud and encourages collaboration between standards organizations and open-source communities.

For anyone involved in the evolution of telecommunications networks, understanding NFV-MANO is crucial. This white paper provides valuable insights into its role, benefits, and the challenges it addresses, making it a must-read for industry professionals.