NaaS presents a new emerging opportunity for communication service providers (CSP) to revolutionize their network and cloud service offerings for the crucial enterprise segment, providing enhanced choice, agility and control to match everchanging business needs

To gain a deeper understanding of the trends driving NaaS adoption, opportunities and requirements, Heavy Reading and Ovum (Omdia), in collaboration with Amdocs, conducted a comprehensive global market surveys designed to collect valuable NaaS trends and preferences from enterprises, virtualized network function (VNF) vendors and communication service providers around the world.

Are you familiar with the concept of Network as a Service?

Agility, security and simplification are seen as key NaaS benefits

26% of enterprises and SMBs believe that agility, combined with the ability to drive organizational IT and network staff to focus on dynamically changing business needs (rather than the network management) is the top ranking benefit of NaaS, followed by security (22%) and capex reduction (18%)

What specific benefits or capabilities convinced / would convince your organization to adopt a Network as a Service model?

Enterprises and SMBs are looking to exploit the power of NaaS for a diverse range of services.

For example, enterprises are extremely likely to be utilizing a CSP portal to purchase managed LAN/WAN services (33%), SD-WAN (31%), datacenter interconnect (30%) and other cloud value-added services (29%)

How likely is it that you would buy, configure and self-provision the following services from your existing main network service provider’s portal (eg: as a virtual network function)?

This diverse range of service adoption proves the fundamental point that NaaS must be a foundational element in any enterprise service provider’s portfolio: it is here – and here to stay.

>60%of enterprises have purchased a technology service or product online

Enterprises are buying many more cloud services then basic telco connectivity services online.

This suggests that rather than buyer maturity or service complexity, the problem lies in the CSPs’ digital delivery strategy

Does your organization buy any technology services or equipment online?

1 in 5respondents claim to have sourced VNFs from a public online marketplace

How likely is it that you will buy, configure and self- provision any virtualized network functions from a public online marketplace?

VNF vendor perspective

67%of VNF/VAS vendor respondents are currently or intend to enter into partnerships with hyperscale cloud service providers (e.g. Microsoft Azure or AWS) to offer VNFs via a marketplace

>60%of VNF vendors who are not yet using a communications service provider (CSP)-hosted marketplace as a channel, indicated they are likely to participate and would go to market with CSPs to deliver services

97%of VNF vendors believe the ability to use a self-service portal for managing and administering NaaS is important to enterprise customers

VNF vendors listed these top three challenges that CSPs face in the execution of their NaaS monetization strategy:

VNF vendors nominated the following top CSPs requirements that would enable them to succeed in their NaaS strategy:

95%cited cross-domain VNF service onboarding

86%cited automated service lifecycle management, in order to reduce service fulfillment time and operational complexities, while improving the customer experience

84%cited cross-domain VNF orchestration, for seamless delivery of VNFs and network configurations

81%cited service chain VNFs from multiple vendors, which would enable them to sell flexible service bundles/offers

81%of respondents evaluated NaaS as a key strategic component of their enterprise and SMB offerings

More than a third (34%) assessed NaaS as “extremely important” and 47% as “important”

Growing beyond connectivity

CSPs plan to leverage NaaS to drive new sustainable revenue from these top three streams:

What key capabilities must CSPs have to succeed in their NaaS strategy?

77%have already implemented, are currently implementing or plan to implement cross-domain orchestration to support their NaaS operations within the next 12-18 months

CSPs are incorporating open, programmable, and vendor-agnostic cross-domain orchestrators into their NaaS execution strategy to simplify VNF onboarding and integration – and more importantly, to automate network services lifecycle management and simplify service operations.

82%have already implemented, are currently implementing or plan to implement cross-domain orchestration to support their NaaS operations within the next 12-18 months

To remain relevant in both a business and technical context, an increasing number of communications service providers (CSPs) are offering their enterprise and SMB customers network and value-added services in the form of Network as a Service (NaaS).

Amdocs’ modular and programmable NaaS solution enables you to rapidly design, deploy and monetize on-demand NaaS offerings. Combined with our self-service portal and VNF marketplace capabilities, our NaaS solutions automate, orchestrates and simplifies the design, ordering and management of network services and value-added services – accelerating time to market, increasing efficiency and transforming the customer experience.

Download the full whitepaper