The World's meeting place for Network Transformation - NFV+SDN & Automation for 5G, Transport & Cloud

08:15

Registration and EXPO open

09:05

Chair's Opening Address

Gail Smith | Founder, SD WAN practice lead | Cavell

09:10

KEYNOTE

Mirko Voltolini | VP Technology & Architecture | Colt Technologies Services

09:30

Beyond NFV: Preparing for the Multi-Cloud Journey

Gabriele Di Piazza | VP, NFV Solutions | VMware

Enterprise organisations are on a multi-cloud journey. This is the largest macro trend in the market today, embracing public, private, edge and cloud native strategies. To fully participate in a multi-cloud economy, communication service providers (CSPs) must embrace multi-cloud within both internal service delivery architectures and external service offers. Delivering consistency across both infrastructure and operations will be critical to success. In this session, Gabriele Di Piazza will overview VMware's vision of the multi-cloud economy and its strategy for enabling CSPs to accelerate and go beyond NFV deployment, to become 1st class cloud citizens.

09:50

Applying DevOps to the Modern NFV Factory

Brian Naughton | CTO | Accanto

In order to achieve a modern NFV factory, the Enterprise IT DevOps model can be applied to the areas of continuous VNF and Network Service integration, testing and deployment by adding NFV specific tools into your IT toolchain. Fully automating the on-boarding process; reducing manual effort, time to production, and bringing greater cohesion between engineering and ops.

10:10

uCPE is the Platform for Service Innovation

James Buchanan | SVP & General Manager Ensemble | ADVA Optical Networking

Much of the talk on universal CPE (uCPE) has been related to cost saving: opex, capex, inventory reduction, etc. These are good goals, but the value of uCPE is in bringing the power of the cloud to the edge of the telco network. uCPE opens the door to rapid design and deployment of services, using best of breed of software components (commercial and open source), and hosted on open platforms. uCPE empowers operators to optimize services such as SD-WAN, deploy net new services such as virtualized encryption, and drive innovation for applications such as 5G and IoT.

10:30

Refreshment & exhibition break

11:15

Chair's Market Highlights

Caroline Chappell | Principal Analyst | Analysys Mason

11:20

KEYNOTE

Matt Beal | Director, Technology Strategy and Architecture | Vodafone

11:40

Driving digital transformation in networks and operations

Adan Pope | Chief Information Technology Officer | Ciena Blue Planet

As network operators look to fully leverage the benefits of SDN and NFV, they are recognizing this will require a transformation of both their networks and operations. In this session, Adan will discuss a pragmatic strategy and vision for bridging the Network and IT/OSS worlds to enable greater levels of collaboration through intelligent automation, and accelerate the deployment of dynamic, virtualized services.

12:00

KEYNOTE

Hiroyuki Oto | General Manager of Core Network Development Department | NTT DOCOMO

12:20

Are NFV and SDN enabling Security as a service?

Nicolas Thomas | NFV Pioneer - MEF SECaaS Lead | Fortinet

SECaaS chair | MEF

Fortinet is engineering security solutions at large and adapts its products to enable service providers to deliver security as a service to their end customers.

Value of security by end customers is seen as high, making it appealing to service providers as a source of revenues. Security can be blurry and is usually tailored to every deployment or environment. NFV and SDN seem a good match for both automated and customized solutions.

This talk aims at presenting a journey of a service provider who wants to provide security as a service and detail the pitfalls, the good points, assumptions and call to make things easier and better. Security is the mix of proper design and implementation which makes it an excellent maturity metric for NFV/SDN solutions.

12:40

Lunchtime Debating Tables - KWA Foyer Level 0

An opportunity to discuss and debate key topics under the guidance and leadership of Congress Advisory Panel members

Edge Computing and 5G

Vanessa Little | Director, Global NFV Ecosystem Architecture | VMware

Chair, Technical Steering Committee | OSM

While 5G is great, what can we actually deploy now? Which use cases make sense now and which are for later? How will that help us get to the full 5G utopia? Is the physical infrastructure ready?

Operationalizing NFV

Marc Cohn | Business Lead, Network Virtualization | Spirent

Now that major operators are beginning to deploy SDN and NFV, the focus has shifted from architecture to operations.This dramatic shift raises questions on how to validate and assure the virtualized environment throughout design, deployment, and operations. Please join us for a discussion on rethinking testing, validation, and service assurance to effectively operationalize SDN/NFV, which is critical towards attaining widespread adoption.

Moving from network-focus to service-focus

Dan Pitt | SVP | MEF

Senior Vice President | Palo Alto Innovation Advisors

Which is better for NFV: VMs or containers?

Prayson Pate | CTO, Ensemble | ADVA Optical Networking

There is a lot of buzz about containers and cloud-native, but today's implementations of VNFs are built in VMs. What do we gain by going to containers? What do we give up? Are containers suitable for telco-style deployments? Join us to discuss these and other questions.

13:40

Please choose from one of four Forums:
- Technology
- Automation
- Business & Services
- 5G CAT

Details and room locations follow below:

13:40

Chair's Opening Address

Patrick Donegan | Founder & Principal Analyst | HardenStance

13:45

KEYNOTE - Orchestration and NFV in the real world

Oliver Cantor | Associate Director of Product Strategy | Verizon

14:05

CloudMetro: Towards a Simplified Network for 5G and Cloud

Alan Hu | Sr. Director of Router & Carrier Ethernet Product Line | Huawei

With the development of B2C/B2B/5G services, service experience has driven telecom cloud to move down. CloudMetro is a telecom cloud bearer network architecture launched by Huawei. It will be providing simple and intelligent ultra-broadband metro network for the next 10 years evolution.

14:25

Getting serious - more than an update on Access 4.0

Thomas Haag | Senior Network Architect | Deutsche Telekom

14:40

Getting serious - more than an update on Access 4.0

Robert Soukup | Senior Program Manager | Deutsche Telekom

14:55

Getting serious - more than an update on Access 4.0

Hans-Joerg Kolbe | Chief Engineer Access Innovation | Deutsche Telekom

Access 4.0 develops and introduces DT's next generation SDN-based access with initial focus on fixed line business FTTH/B/C. Key ingredients are bare metal hardware, lots of open source and merchant silicon. We informed you during last year's Layer123 SDN/NFV congress about our ambition and time line. This year we'd like to share an update on our progress and much more. We made significant advancements on the BNG-function side. Now, Access 4.0 is shifting gear to productize the solution with a partner.

15:05

TECHNOLOGY PANEL

Alexander Britkin | CEO | NFWare

Phil Kippen | Sr. Director, NFV Group | VMware

Ullas Krishnan | Senior Architect, SDN/NFV Services | Infosys

Moderated by:

Patrick Donegan | Founder & Principal Analyst | HardenStance

15:35

Refreshment & exhibition break

16:05

Chair's Market Highlights

Paul Parker-Johnson | Practice Lead, Cloud and Virtual System Infrastructures | ACG Research

16:10

Role of NFV in End-to-End Services

Marcus Brunner | Chief Researcher, Head of Standardization | Swisscom

So far NFV has largly looked into the data center part of the network running certain functionalities centralized. The discussion needs to include more end-to-end perspective including access networks and more distributed data center deployments including central officies.

16:30

The Arm-based Approach to uCPE

Shai Tsur | Senior SW Ecosystem Program Manager | Arm

As the market rapidly expands for Universal CPE solutions (uCPE), service providers are seeking optimal efficiency and choice. The Arm ecosystem delivers unique and compelling TCO advantages in performance/watt/area with acceleration engines, a scale-out, many-core architecture and security features. This session outlines specific uCPE solutions being brought to market to deliver on this unique value proposition.

16:50

Automated Cloud IMS for Slicing, 5G & MEC

Richard Hewitt | Senior Product Manager | Metaswitch

Tomorrow's networks will be built on a 5GC with Slicing and MEC enabling exciting new use-cases. Here we explore how appropriately architected and automated core network software can meet those demands, and power business opportunity.

17:10

Journey to an Automated Network

Ori Gerstel | Co-Founder and CTO | Sedona Systems

Faced with fully digitalized and efficient competition, operators need to transform all aspects of their organization, turning to SDN in order to automate their network. However, the journey from legacy networks to next-generation automated networks involves critical choices. We'll discuss the importance of choosing the right SDN control and management hierarchy and the unique role of the Network Controller in the journey from legacy to an automated network. We'll demonstrate how operators can gradually deploy the architecture and still add value every step of the way towards the goal of a service-aware network enabling fast activation of complex services, continuous optimization of the network, and reduced dependence on vendors.

17:30

PANEL DEBATE - Service Cloudification

Putting Cloud-Native Technologies to Work in Virtualized Network Services: Advantages, Challenges, and the Road Ahead toward Mastering the Technique in Deployments

Phil Kippen | Sr. Director, NFV Group | VMware

Luc Provoost | Solutions Architect | Intel

Nicolas Thomas | NFV Pioneer - MEF SECaaS Lead | Fortinet

SECaaS chair | MEF

Peter Wörndle | Expert in NFV & Cloud Native Architectures | Ericsson

Richard Hewitt | Senior Product Manager | Metaswitch

Moderated by:

Paul Parker-Johnson | Practice Lead, Cloud and Virtual System Infrastructures | ACG Research

18:00

End of Technology Forum

18:00

SDN NFV WORLD EXPO IS OPEN

19:10

End of Congress Day Two

19:10

Please reserve your seat and join us for an evening of networking and celebration at the NetTA Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner! Further details at www.layer123.com/awards

13:40

Chair's Opening Address

Emir Halilovic | Principal Analyst, Global Telecom Technology and Software | GlobalData

13:45

Orchestration in action

Marton Sabli | Head of Solution Line Orchestration | Ericsson

14:05

KEYNOTE

Diego Lopez | Head of Technology Exploration and Standards | Telefónica

Chair | ETSI NFV ISG

14:25

Organic Self-Adjusting Networks

Hayim Porat | CTO | ECI

Network edges drive new patterns of network traffic, and as a result of these distributed patterns, it is getting increasingly difficult to predict traffic for two reasons: First, massive amounts of data produced and consumed in spurts that need to be distributed to different institutions and data centers. Second, the advent of 5G/IoT/MEC platforms will lead to the creation of many new services and thus many new and erratic data flows with widely differing traffic handling and latency requirements.

ECI will outline the work needed to take dynamically controlled networks to the next level, when networks will be able to self-optimize and self-configure according to the capabilities of routes and resources to deal with different traffic demands originating from the edge.

14:45

The road towards 5G with Network Virtualization

Pål Grønsund | Senior Research Scientist | Telenor

15:05

AUTOMATION PANEL

George Edward Oakes | Expert B | Huawei

Jutta Kemppainen | Sr. Principal Product Manager | Infinera

Nils Petter Tisell | Product Manager, Network Orchestration | Cisco

Anand Gonuguntla | CEO | Centina Systems

David Wang | Founder & CEO | Wave2Wave

Moderated by:

Emir Halilovic | Principal Analyst, Global Telecom Technology and Software | GlobalData

15:35

Refreshment & exhibition break

16:05

Chair's Market Highlights

Francis Haysom | Principal Analyst | Appledore Research

16:10

How to make Zero Touch Operations a reality

Domenico Convertino | Head of OSS/BSS Business | HPE

With the advent of new technology waves such as NFV, SDN, 5G, Intelligent Edge and telco Cloud, streamlining the operations processes and automating them has become a top priority for the CSPs to be able to cope with the volume, complexity and dynamicity of networks and services. This presentation focuses on how to make this journey a reality, spreading the culture of Zero Touch Operations, moving to DevOps (CI/CD…) delivery methodology, deploying innovative solutions such as IA-based and intent-based closed loop OSS solutions.

16:30

Smart from Edge to Core - SDN/NFV Use Cases in the Era of 5G, IoT, and Hyperscale Cloud

Christian Uremovic | Technical and Solutions Marketing | Infinera

• Agile carrier hyperscale infrastructure - multi-layer, multi-vendor optical connection management, end-to-end multi-vendor 200G alien wavelength provisioning*
• SDN-powered disaggregated switching/routing - accelerating innovation cycles and service flexibility in open, disaggregated router environments
• NFV & edge computing - NFV service orchestration - intelligent end-to-end management of virtualized services

16:50

Automating the SDN in a Multicloud World

Jared Headley | Sr. Director, Market Development | Cisco

Real life examples of how:

- Network orchestration can create the platform to enable complete lifecycle automation of your network

- Network orchestration intelligently orchestrates SD-WAN deployments across the branch, WAN, and multicloud environments

- SD-WAN delivers a robust, secure and agile way to transform your WAN

17:10

SDN/NFV in Public Cloud, Telecom services and Transport network. Multi-level orchestration

Alexander Khvostov | Director, Integrated Solutions Department | Rostelecom-Datacenters

• SDN inside Datacenters for public IaaS cloud - connect Cloud and MPLS services and new opportunities
• NFV platform for SOC, automation of security services
• T-SDN for end-to-end multilayer orchestration

17:30

PANEL DEBATE - Practically achieving large scale automation in CSPs

Software enabled network technology such as SDN and NFV and their associated management frameworks promise high degrees of innovation with automation. However, in many cases these benefits are not yet fully being achieved or are still limited to proof of concept. Are existing CSP operational and business models acting as a "handbrake" to widespread automation and innovation using SDN/NFV? The panel will discuss the practicalities of achieving automation, discuss existing success stories and what they believe needs to change to truly achieve large scale automation based on software enabled networks.

Jared Kellogg | VP, SDN Strategy | NEC/Netcracker

Moty Cohen | OSS/NMS System Architect leader and a Product Line Manager | ECI Telecom

Mervyn Kelly | Marketing Director, EMEA | Ciena

Janez Ori | Director Strategy and Business Development | Iskratel

Moderated by:

Francis Haysom | Principal Analyst | Appledore Research

18:00

End of Automation Forum

18:00

SDN NFV World Expo is open

19:10

End of Congress Day Two

19:10

Please reserve your seat and join us for an evening of networking and celebration at the NetTA Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner! Further details at www.layer123.com/awards

13:40

Chair's Opening Address

Gail Smith | Founder, SD WAN practice lead | Cavell

13:45

How to Move Up the Value Chain in B2B

Jared Kellogg | VP, SDN Strategy | NEC/Netcracker

There is significant untapped potential in the B2B market. Unlocking this revenue requires a new engagement model and a different service approach. In this session, we will discuss how you can evolve your service offerings and customer interactions to be more competitive with significant differentiation. We will also highlight the results of service providers that have already made this move

14:05

Leveraging SDN/NFV to expand your lines of business (e.g. MSSP transition)

James Feger | GM & VP, Service Provider Solutions | F5

Service providers need to expand their lines of business and better meet customer needs. To do that at scale and make the business model work, many service providers are looking to light up easy-to-deploy managed services that provide better security for customers' applications hosted in the cloud. This session will discuss several key success factors for SPs to make the transition to MSSPs. For example, packaged/turnkey virtualized solutions that can be deployed quickly, subscription consumption models not tied to underlying infrastructure, and a consolidated services suite that minimize box sprawl.

14:25

PANEL DEBATE - NFV Revenue Generation

A key goal for NFV is to enable new revenue and service agility. This panel will discuss the lessons that can be drawn after 5 years of innovation, development and deployment. Where have been the key use cases for application? Has the low-hanging fruit been picked, where are the next targets? How can the benefits be leveraged into the future?

Bryan Madden | Director of Marketing | Intel

Sue White | Head of SDN/NFV Portfolio Marketing | NEC/Netcracker

Hideyuki Tsugane | Director | Trend Micro

Raanan Tzemach | VP Product Management | Telco Systems

Moderated by:

Gail Smith | Founder, SD WAN practice lead | Cavell

15:10

Refreshment & exhibition break

15:45

Chair's Market Highlights

Tim Doiron | Principal Analyst, Practice Lead, Intelligent Networking | ACG Research

15:50

Next Generation VxF Platform: Moving NFV from Concept to Real Business

Wenyu Shen | Technology Development Manager | NTT Communications

Nowadays, we are experiencing a paradigm shift towards hybrid ICT; hybrid WAN has become de facto standard WAN construction and we further see an irresistible migration to public cloud and SaaS. However, there are still some challenges in the real world deployment such as complexity, security and performance. To solve these challenges, NTT Communications is developing its next generation VxF platform and has started customer trials. In this presentation, we will cover some design details of the platform and introduce the latest live customer use cases. We believe it is the customer value behind these use cases that is leading NFV from the concept to the real business.

16:10

SDNizer: Bring your legacy devices into the Digital World

Stephan Scholz | CTO | Atrinet

Digital Transformation in the Telco Industry (as in any other industry) needs to happen, is happening and will happen! The question is: how and when? The major obstacle that seems to slow down the progress is the complexity of this transformation, specifically when a lot of legacy equipment needs to be transformed. Another patcher seems to be the complexity of the solutions currently offered in the market. In this presentation 2 topics will be addressed:
1. how digital transformation can be done in a really simple manner
2. a very simple tool called SDNizer, which is wrapping every legacy equipment so that it looks "new born" for the digitalized SDN- and NFV-world.

16:30

Charging for SDN, NFV and 5G

Lothar Reith | Senior Consultant | Detecon International

The 5G charging architecture evolution brings about major changes. A new Charging Function (CHF) exposes a service based interface and supports converged charging. In the session an extension to 5G converged charging will be proposed as study item for enhancing both 5G subscriber charging as well as ecosystem charging of SDN, NFV and 5G.

16:50

The Implications of 5G and Beyond for OSS Intelligent Operations as the New Norm

Azam Beyk | Lead OSS Consultant | Comarch

CSPs are facing major challenges to the sustainability of their network
operations. Their current operations are becoming very complex, due to exponential changes in the market and technology. The operational processes they have been following will not work in the near future. The evolution of technology is creating new opportunities in new market sectors, and developments are continuing to drive both service demand and the development of new telecom applications. Telecom operators must remain agile and adapt quickly to next generation communications such as 5G. They are looking at innovating within their network operations, while profiting from the new business opportunities enabled by 5G services. To be able to monetize these new opportunities optimally, they must adopt a combination of incremental innovation in certain areas, and disruptive innovation in other areas.

CSPs are working to minimize their reliance on manual processes in order to increase operational efficiency. Operations support systems (OSS) will play an important part in achieving 5G goals. As networks become more software-defined, they are less reliant on the manual input of network engineers. As a result, artificial intelligence (AI) will play a major role in transforming OSS towards cognitive 5G networks and services. The aim of this article is to help end users understand both the impact of 5G on the existing systems and the migration paths to the future OSS. The scope of this document includes CSPs' operational challenges, a review of 5G communications, the impact and key technological requirements for future OSS, an introduction to intelligent OSS, and finally cognitive 5G orchestration based on AI.

17:10

PANEL DEBATE - NFV Cost Reduction

A key goal for NFV is to enable network cost reduction and increase operating efficiency.

This panel will discuss the lessons that can be drawn after 5 years of innovation, development and deployment. Where have been the key shifts in capex and opex? Has the potential for cost reduction been overtaken by other aspects? How can the benefits be leveraged into the future?

Victor Donselaar | VP Sales | Accanto

Himal Kumar | Co-Founder and CTO | Canopus Networks

David Williams | SVP Sales & Marketing | netElastic

Stefano Cantarelli | Executive VP & Chief Marketing Officer | Mavenir

Moderated by:

Tim Doiron | Principal Analyst, Practice Lead, Intelligent Networking | ACG Research

17:40

End of Business & Services Forum

17:40

SDN NFV World Expo is open

18:50

End of Congress Day Two

18:50

Please reserve your seat and join us for an evening of networking and celebration at the NetTA Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner! Further details at www.layer123.com/awards

13:40

Chair's Opening Address

Dave Bolan | Senior Analyst, Voice and Packet Core Market Research | Dell'Oro Group

13:50

Accelerating network transformation through innovation at the RAN

Clare Somerville | Senior Wireless Architect | Intel

5G use cases are numerous, diverse and often challenging; services and applications don't stand still so 5G deployments will also need to evolve over time. To support this both NFV and network slicing must be enabled all the way through the access network. This talk will highlight how Intel's Xeon scalable processors and their ability to run traditional DSP workloads is key to this network transformation.

14:10

KEYNOTE

Phil Bridge | Principal Network Architect | BT

14:30

Making your storage the efficient Machine Learning (ML) compute engine at the 5G Edge

Ash Young | Solutions Architect/Consultant | Arm

The move to 5G Edge Computing necessitates that we re-think how we incorporate storage into our network architectures. By incorporating CORD-managed Arm Cortex processors and Arm Mali GPUs onto our drives, we can reduce network backhaul, latency, CAPEX and even OPEX by greater than 10x. This session explores an innovative storage/compute reference design for the edge that delivers exceptional TCO.

14:50

5G Oriented Simplified Network

Zhiming Li | Chief Expert of Network Architecture Transformation | Huawei

In the 5G era, simplified network becomes the evolution trend of network transformation. Simplified network can help to reduce TCO, improve Operation & maintenance efficiency and launch services in short TTM. Simplified network consists of simplified site, simplified architecture, simplified protocol, and simplified operation & maintenance.

15:10

Neutral Hosting in 5G infrastructures: Concept and Challenges

Muhammad Shuaib Siddiqui | Senior Researcher / Area Manager Software Networks | i2CAT Foundation

The talk will focus on elaborating the neutral host concept, why it is needed for 5G and how it can be applied to 5G infrastructures in the cities. The talk would also include technical and business challenges neutral hosting entails for the different stakeholders involved.

15:30

Refreshment & exhibition break

16:05

Chair's Market Highlights

Ray Mota | Managing Partner | ACG Research

16:10

Common Core for 5G Evolution

Tu Jiashun | Principal Scientist of NFV/SDN | ZTE

In the evolution from existing networks to target 5G networks, a Common Core which can simultaneously support 2G/3G/4G/Fixed access together with 5G NSA, SA and its hybrid mode will significantly reduce CAPEX/OPEX, while making the migration journey smoother and less risky. Following the R15 specification, the SBA common core makes EPC/5GC services composed of several efficient and open micro services, which not only greatly improves the performance of the core network, but also accelerates the business innovation of the vertical industry. At the same time, the introduction of AI/ML and end-to-end network slicing will enable intelligent operation and agile deployment of the network.

16:30

Introducing DevOps in 5G Networks

Diego Lopez | Head of Technology Exploration and Standards | Telefónica

Chair | ETSI NFV ISG

16:50

Network Slicing 101: How are network slices going to be deployed?

Ricard Vilalta | Senior Researcher | CTTC

Senior Researcher | CTTC

17:10

Next Generation Platform-as-a-service

Laurent Roullet | Head of Virtualization and Verification Research Group, Nokia Bell-Labs | Nokia

NGPaaS is a 5G-PPP funded research project developing innovative platform-based approaches for building, shipping and running telco-grade and cloud-native 5G services spanning Core, Access and Transport (CAT) segments

17:30

5G PANEL - Network Slicing

The industry's ambition for 5G end-to-end network slicing to support differentiated services and segmented applications is bold. This panel will discuss current state-of-the-art and key demonstrators. Where are the greatest challenges? How does NFV intersect with requirements for slicing?

Mike Morris | Head of Product Line Technology, Nokia Software's Digital | Nokia

François Lemarchand | Product Manager Cloud & SDN | Ericsson

Vincent Spinelli | SVP, Global Sales, Marketing & Business Development | RIFT.io

Moderated by:

Ray Mota | Managing Partner | ACG Research

18:00

End of 5G CAT Forum

18:00

SDN NFV World Expo is open

19:10

End of Congress Day Two

19:10

Please reserve your seat and join us for an evening of networking and celebration at the NetTA Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner! Further details at www.layer123.com/awards