Only a small percentage of service providers that took part in an IHS strategies survey are currently running IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) in a virtualized environment, the research firm reports.
IHS conducted in-depth interviews with global service providers that have IMS core equipment in their networks or will by the end of 2017 and discovered that only 8 percent are running IMS network elements in a network functions virtualization (NFV) environment today.
Even so, more are on the way to using software running on commercial off-the-shelf hardware as a stepping stone to full NFV, says Diane Myers, research director for VoIP, UC and IMS at IHS. One of the biggest drivers for NFV is the ability to scale services up and down quickly and introduce new network services more efficiently and in a timely manner, which makes IMS a good early fit for NFV, she said. Article