Program Participant

PTC'17: 15–18 JANUARY 2017 | View the PTC'17 CFP (pdf) | Submit a proposal

Program Participant

Prayson Pate

CTO, Overture Networks
USA

Overture Chief Technology Officer Prayson Pate most recently guided Overture’s transition from a telecom hardware powerhouse to an innovation leader in orchestration solutions for software-defined carrier-class networks.

Prayson is a passionate industry evangelist for network functions virtualization (NFV.) He shares NFV information, ideas and guidance through bylined articles published by industry media, blog posts online and by speaking at industry events. Prayson is an accomplished technologist who began his career in 1983 at FiberLAN and later co-founded Overture in 2000.

He has contributed to standards bodies such as the MEF and IETF, and was chosen to be the co-editor of the pseudowire emulation edge-to-edge (PWE3) requirements and architecture documents (RFCs 3916 and 3985). Prayson received a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from North Carolina State University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Duke University. He is the holder of nine patents.

You can find Prayson Pate in:

Topical Session 8: Business Case for SDN / NFV
Tuesday, 19 January 2016
15.30–16.45

Proceedings:

Show Me the Money: NFV Orchestration and Service Innovation

Abstract

Service agility enabled by NFV orchestration and actionable intelligence is the key to boosting service revenues through the following characteristics:

Dynamic and scalable services.
Shorter development time due to modern development tools and methods.
Faster deployment time for services.
Open APIs, facilitating machine-to-machine integration of previously disparate functions or resources.

Virtualization of a service allows us to adapt and change both the service delivery and also the charging models. So, how do we enable construction and deployment of such service innovation built from NFV components? The key is NFV orchestration.

The ETSI NFV ISG MANO specification provides a lot of good material on how NFV orchestration should operate. However, other essential aspects of orchestration include:

Actionable intelligence based on collection, analysis and correlation of big data from service, virtual and physical layers as well as IT, Cloud and network systems.
Spanning of the physical and virtual, using standard NFVI and Multi-vendor control.
Open platform with support from a strong group of vendors.
Carrier class system built for deployability.
Lifecycle management of services, including onboarding of virtual network functions and assignment, management, scaling and reclamation of virtual resources.

A proper NFV orchestration system is the glue that cements the vision of NFV into reality.