The move towards all-IP mechanisms has begun to collapse the traditional boundaries between IT and telecommunications infrastructure. The functions of the telecommunications network can now be made available as pure software functions, leveraging previously IT-centric data centre architectures. This will yield compelling savings, as well as offer service agility. Hence the motivation by operators to adopt Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) architectures. This article examines the move beyond simple virtualisation of network functions to commodity hardware and embracing elasticity, orchestration, scalability and distributed architectures for signalling and media.
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