Source: computerweekly.com (original reporting, April 2020)
Vodafone Completes Pan-European Network Virtualisation with VMware
Vodafone has completed a multi-year project to build a single digital network architecture across all its European business regions and 21 markets. The final milestone was the completion of work in Albania, marking the end of a continent-wide roll-out of network virtual infrastructure (NVI) carried out in partnership with VMware.
The timing of the announcement, made in April 2020, was notable: Vodafone cited the Covid-19 pandemic as a demonstration of why reliable, agile, and upgradeable network infrastructure is critically important, as customers across Europe increasingly depended on the operator for connectivity and communications services.
What Was Built and Why
The core objective of the project was to move away from fragmented, proprietary hardware-based network functions toward a unified, cloud-based virtualised architecture. By deploying VMware’s telco cloud platform, Vodafone aimed to:
- Design, build, test, and deploy next-generation network functions more rapidly and securely
- Reduce the need for manual intervention in network operations and maintenance through infrastructure automation
- Gain the agility to scale services elastically in response to changing demand
- Lower the total cost of running core network functions
According to Vodafone’s internal analysis and reporting from March 2020, the NVI platform enables new network functions to be deployed approximately 40% faster compared to previous methods. Vodafone Group CTO Johan Wibergh stated that the cost of core network functions had been reduced by approximately 50% as a result of the transformation.
Deployment Scale and Platform Details
The VMware infrastructure has been deployed at more than 57 sites across Europe, with an additional 25 sites in Vodafone’s Africa, Asia, and Oceania markets. The platform supports:
- Voice core, data core, and service platform workloads
- Over 900 virtual network functions (VNFs)
- Nearly half of Vodafone’s core network nodes providing voice and data services
The specific VMware product powering the deployment is vCloud NFV, VMware’s Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) platform designed for telecommunications operators. This platform enables communications service providers to run virtualised network services on a standardised cloud infrastructure rather than dedicated physical appliances.
VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform: What It Does
VMware’s telco cloud platform is engineered to help network operators transition from hardware-centric architectures to software-defined, cloud-native infrastructure. Key capabilities relevant to an operator like Vodafone include:
- Accelerated time to market: New services and network functions can be deployed as software, dramatically shortening the cycle from design to production.
- Operational streamlining: Automation reduces reliance on manual processes for provisioning, configuration, and fault management.
- Infrastructure cost reduction: Consolidating network functions onto shared cloud infrastructure lowers capital and operational expenditure compared to maintaining discrete hardware for each function.
- Elastic business models: Compute and network capacity can be scaled up or down in response to traffic demand, enabling more efficient resource utilisation.
Executive Perspectives
Vodafone Group CTO Johan Wibergh emphasised the operator’s broader digital transformation ambitions: “Vodafone wants to be the industry’s leading digital telco and we are pleased with the progress made to introduce modern cloud-based technology and automation. Working with VMware, we have improved the speed and efficiency with which we can support customers and estimate that the cost of our core network functions has been reduced by 50%.”
Shekar Ayyar, then Executive Vice President and General Manager for Telco and Edge Cloud at VMware, highlighted the broader industry trend: “Leading service providers, such as Vodafone, are adopting a telco cloud infrastructure to deliver next-generation applications and services. The successful engagement between our two companies is evident in the tremendous results Vodafone has captured since starting on its network transformation journey.”
Significance for the Telecoms Industry
Vodafone’s completed roll-out represents one of the largest deployments of network virtualisation infrastructure by a single operator in Europe. The project illustrates several trends that were accelerating across the telecoms sector in 2020 and have continued since:
- NFV adoption at scale: Moving from proof-of-concept NFV deployments to production-grade, pan-regional infrastructure covering hundreds of VNFs.
- Vendor consolidation: Standardising on a single cloud infrastructure platform across diverse geographies to simplify operations and reduce integration overhead.
- 5G readiness: Virtualised, cloud-native infrastructure is a prerequisite for the network slicing and edge computing capabilities central to 5G service delivery.
- Crisis resilience: The Covid-19 pandemic underscored the operational value of remotely manageable, software-driven network infrastructure that can be scaled without physical site visits.
For DevOps and platform engineers working in or adjacent to the telecoms sector, this deployment offers a practical reference point for the scale at which cloud-native infrastructure principles — automation, virtualisation, and continuous deployment — are being applied to critical national communications networks.