Keith Townsend of The CTO Advisor comments:
A question I see pretty often is what is NFV or Network Function Virtualization. It’s a rather fancy acronym for virtualized network devices. Think of the idea of the virtual switch but expanded to other devices such as routers, load balancers and intrusion protection systems (IPS).
Why would you want to virtualize these devices? For the same reason, you’d want to virtualize a server. Abstracting these network functions allows for more flexible operations. If you are a service provider such as AT&T and need to stand up thousands of devices a day as you add customers or make changes to existing accounts, NFV can save millions of dollars a year. By enabling automation, you can have customers make self-service changes to their accounts and eliminate the overhead of scheduling installation and rolling a truck.
Keith takes a look at what NFV is and why you might want to do it today.
Read more at: High-level definition of NFV
