Complicated carrier networks need to be eased toward SDN/NFV

Very few SDN/NFV implementations are expected to be "greenfield" so the key will be to make the new work with existing networks. At SDN & Openflow World Congress 2013, in Bad Homburg, Germany, Metaswitch was showing how enterprises and carriers can take existing technology and gain benefits from it SDN-wise by running legacy protocol stacks in a virtual environment or on 'bare metal'. Matthew Finlayson of Metaswitch explains it all to Martyn Warwick. The next phase, he says, will see carriers start looking at the business arrangements they might engineer with vendors and with each other, to take long term advantage of the new technology.