I attended SDN World Congress in The Hague a couple weeks ago and among many meetings there I had a conversation with David Snow, Principle Analyst for IP Services Infrastructure at Current Analysis.  We both agreed that “cloud native” has become a hot topic in the NFV world of late, and I was able to share our views on cloud native with him.  He has just published a blog post on this topic at https://networkmatter.com/2016/11/02/microservices-how-cloud-native-are-network-vendors-today/

Cloud native is not just a hot topic, it’s a big one, David raises some pertinent questions about how traditional telco equipment vendors are going to make the transition from their current approach to NFV with “ported appliance” software to real cloud native solutions, and points out that customers are going to demand and expect some progress.  He also namechecks Metaswitch as an early leader in the cloud native space.

As we engage with network operators who are wrestling with the on-boarding of virtualized network functions that have traditional software architectures – and discovering that cloud native VNFs really are far easier to work with – we see a lot of confusion about what cloud native really means and why it is so much better.  We also have concerns that the term is being devalued as more and more vendors make spurious claims that they, too, are offering cloud native solutions.  

In response to this, we’re taking the lead in developing educational materials to help network operators understand cloud native communications software in depth, and to provide them with the tools to distinguish between real cloud native VNFs and those that are really thinly-disguised ported appliances.  Watch this space.