EEE Computer and Communication Societies and GBC/ACM

7:00 PM, Thursday, April 6, 2017

Verizon Labs, 117 West Street, Waltham, MA

Virtualization for the new age Telcos

Azhar Sayeed

Most if not all Telecommunication providers have adopted Virtualization as a core tenet of their architecture going forward. However, there continue to be many challenges to virtualizing applications and network functions and creating new age platforms that can serve their purpose for the next decade. Most software vendors adopt a strategyd that amounts to a quick and dirty approach to Virtualization by taking existing appliance based software and applying wrappers to run in the virtualized environment. While this creates a feasible scale up model, it doesn't really address the true vision of Virtualization.

This presentation walks the attendees through the journey of virtualization and explains why it is necessary to re-architect some services and look at Virtualization as a different paradigm and build true cloud scale models. The presentation takes the example of vCPE and Mobile Networks Network Slicing for 5G use case to explain how virtualization and micro services models may be applied to build next generation architectures.

Azhar Sayeed is currently at Red Hat Inc., as a Chief Architect driving their Service Provider Architectures and solutions with Openstack, SDN, NFV and DC orchestration. Prior to Red Hat, Azhar is a 17 year veteran of Cisco Systems Inc. His last responsibility there was a Sr. Director of Solutions Engineering. Azhar was responsible for developing System Architectures, developing and delivering Cloud based solutions and bringing them to market as whole offers for SPs.

Azhar has also actively contributed to the industry adoption of cutting edge technologies. He is an active participant and a contributor to industry forums and standards bodies. His interests are in the area of Cloud Architectures, Openstack, SDN, virtualization, Data Center Networking and Mobile Networks.

Azhar is the co-author of a book "MPLS and Next-Generation Networks: Foundations for NGN and Enterprise Virtualization" with Monique Morrow, has 9 patents in the space of Network protocols and several published papers.

Important Note: Verizon Technology Center requests the names of the meeting attendees in advance of the meeting. If you plan to attend, please send a note via e-mail with your name to Bob Malupin at Robert.Malupin@VerizonWireless.com by Wednesday, April 5th.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. and the presentation soon after at Verizon Labs. Directions to Verizon Technology Center (old Verizon Labs location), 60 Sylvan Rd. campus, Waltham, MA 02451: Take Exit 27B on I95/128, heading west on Winter Street. Stay all the way to the right. Verizon Technology Center is 1/2 mile ahead. At the second traffic light, turn left onto WEST ST. and then take the first right (at the Verizon sign) which leads into the Verizon campus. Take the first left. The building and entrance for the meeting are on your right. Note that the entrance to the auditorium area is by the far corner, with the picnic tables out front, and not the tower or the new building.