Last month I attended Layer123’s online event. There were a lot of detailed technical architectures for the future of NFV, SDN and 5G during the show. However, perhaps because of its online nature, there was no real sense of what business problems these architectures were directly solving, Sure, there were the usual graphs showing revenues stagnating with data volume exponentially growing; but there was no direct relationship between real NFV/SDN/5G projects and demonstrated CAPEX or OPEX savings or increased innovation agility. In fact the STC presentation showed that existing NFV was resulting in increased cost, not less. Groundhog Day – Endless internal Proofs of Concept This lack of direct ties between new technology like NFV or 5G, with the business success of the CSP, means that in many cases these technologies remain used in ongoing proofs of concept within the telco. They never quite see the light of day with the customer, because it isn’t quite important enough to disrupt existing ways of working. You can similarly see this in the use of 5G beyond simply more mobile broadband. Lewis Hamilton can play the piano too. Vodafone recently publicised how 5G innovation was enabling Lewis Hamilton and Jay Keys to […]