While network functions virtualization (NFV) proof-of-concept deployments and education continue to rise, there is still much to be done to realize all the benefits offered by NFV. To help communication service providers (CSPs) find the right path to deployment, Timo Jokiaho, head of Red Hat’s EMEA telco technology office, recently joined Bryan Madden, director of marketing for Intel’s network platforms group, for an interview at the SDN NFV World Congress to share how the two companies are collaborating to support NFV infrastructure (NFVi) deployments.

At the conference, Intel announced a collaboration with Red Hat to provide CSPs with a fully integrated NFVi reference architecture as a foundation for more stable, efficient, feature-rich and optimized NFV deployments. As Jokiaho and Madden share in the interview, NFV still requires more industry convergence at both the hardware level and the virtual network functions (VNF) level.

"There needs to be convergence within the VNF industry, eventually going to cloud-native VNFs which is another journey," says Jokiaho.

The two also discussed 5G readiness and the importance of today’s network transformation to fulfilling the 5G readiness goal. Red Hat’s Jokiaho further discussed Red Hat’s three-step approach to 5G, cloud radio access networks (C-RAN) and industry consensus low-latency packet delivery and the split load between base station and the cloud. To learn more about how Red Hat and Intel collaborative solutions can support your NFVi deployment, listen to the full interview.