DELIVERING SLA-ASSURED CONNECTIVITY
DELIVERING SLA-ASSURED CONNECTIVITY
Today’s mobile networks are mission- and even life critical to the businesses and organizations they support. Network Slicing allows carriers for the firsttime to deliver rock-solid SLA-assured connectivity
Whereas earlier generations of mobile infrastructure were relied upon for simple voice and later, light data usage, the advent of the smart phone and any army of apps in the billions has changed all of that. Today’s mobile networks are mission- and even life- critical to the businesses and organizations they support. Unfortunately, today’s Best Effort networks simply can’t guarantee performance, and thus their value, at whatever aggregate speeds they achieve will be continue to be perceived as low-value commodities. Network Slicing changes all of that by allowing carriers for the first time to deliver rock-solid SLA-assured connectivity.
Selling network slices moves the operator’s business in a dramatically different direction; From being a low-value bit pipe to being a core strategic asset to the businesses they serve, and a trusted vendor to consumers. SLA-assured connectivity-as-a-service gives carriers a model for delivering high value experiences in an enormous new market that touches on all facets of the mobile-enabled digital lifestyle. As each network slice will address a unique customer need, carriers will be able to deliver multiple slices to each customer based on different needs and contexts.
But to get there and in order to transition successfully to selling slices, mobile operators will need to take a deep dive into their consumer and business segments and quickly turn those into slice-based capacity / latency assured products and services. And although this will come to its full end-to-end fruition in 5G, the path to that business-critical eventuality is paved in 4G with the introduction of network slicing; in today’s slicing-ready LTE networks.
In the context of SLA-assured connectivity we see a number of use cases within multiple categories (“Life-Critical”, “Mission-Critical”, “Media & Entertainment” Etc.) all of them being delivered appropriate combinations of static or dynamic slices based on capacity or delay sensitivity or a combination of both. At the bottom of the pyramid, which also generally represents the scale of the market, we see a set of miscellaneous differentiated service categories including an ad-sponsored, “Zero Rating” which here we have as the only use case being delivered “Best Effort” mobile connectivity. Today, nearly every large technology company maintains one or more private networks that deliver SLA-assured throughout and a certain, pre-defined measure of capacity and ultra-low latency from a commercial ISP. One need only think of today’s Content Delivery Networks like Akamai, and their provisioning technologies like FastTCP to help their business customers sell video subscription services to end users to see the point. Slicing in this context is already very much core of today’s cloud Internet DNA.
A PLATFORM FOR ANYWHERE, ANYTIME MOBILE BANDWIDTH-ON -DEMAND
Cloudstreet’s award-winning Dynamic Network Slicing Platform provides a low-friction entry point to massive service slice virtualization for quite literally every use case under the sun.
But to begin talking about guaranteed connectivity mobile carriers need to think in terms of a kind of mobile services “constitution” that makes plain and transparent the economics of network performance (capacity, latency, throughput, accessibility) such that consumers fully understand what their carrier is selling to them or giving to them for free. So while their experience of using slices will be a fluid part of their day-to- day mobile lifestyle, in order for the value of next-generation service orchestration to be properly conveyed, consumers must play a direct and commanding role in its use. This is fundamental to the transition to a user-centric, user-defined, user-driven relationship with the network provider, and our primary theme of the User-Defined Network.
The Cloudstreet solution aligns with the current structure of carrier business and consumer services, balancing would-be price points and costs within a range of user tiers. At the top of the pyramid, premium Cloudstreet services would address “essential” and upmarket tiers that impose high bandwidth demands. These include government, law enforcement, private security and large-scale cultural & commercial events that may require symmetrical multipoint streaming. Built around iron-clad SLAs, and in some cases legal public mandates this level would receive an assured non-buffering, zero-latency, zero-loss signals.
Whatever 5G looks like in its fully developed implementation it will most certainly include the essential capabilities promised by the kind of software-defined networks and SLA-assured dynamic network slicing innovations made possible by Cloudstreet. Now beyond the proof of concept phase, Cloudstreet is in the process of deploy- ing its solution in partnership with a number of European carriers and the US Government’s first responders’ and public safety and security agencies.
This is the promise of the application aware network. If you’d like to find out more about how Cloudstreet’s Dynamic Network Slicing Solutions can be integrated into your network environment, contact us at: sales@cloudstreet.co
What is Network Slicing?
Network Slicing Categories
Vertical Network Slicing
Horizontal Network Slicing
Static Network Slicing
Dynamic Network Slicing
Network Slice Creation
Network Slice Inventory
Network Slice Management
SDN and Network Slicing
NFV and Network Slicing
Network Slice Selection Function (NSSF)