There are some innovative ways to make money nowadays, and sometimes kids can come up with new ways that we hadn't thought about.  For examples, we know some kids in the area who are raising money for various charities.  Instead of asking their relatives to sponsor them or going door-to-door to the neighbors to get the money, one child decided to sell duct tape wallets and homemade potpurri, while another decided to sell her book collection to raise money.  Those kids clearly are thinking about new ways to get money for something old and traditional.

In the world of service providers and networks, the demand for new and better services continue to grow, while the networks must expand and quickly adapt to these demands.  One way that operators are evolving their network is toadopt some of the latest technologies like NFV (network functions virtualization). Infonetics recently found that 35 percent of the worldwide telecom carriers they surveyed are planning to deploy NFV in 2015.  They are doing this because they believe that NFV and its SDN (software-defined networking) architecture will deliver benefits in service agility and new revenue, operational efficiencies and capex savings.  Finding new ways to build revenue paths out of the network is critical for operators today as they innovate to find new sources of revenues.

Operators have been looking to Policy to help them find new ways to find value in their network.  Specifically, they need a policy platform which can help them quickly adapt to build new services and even new networks for other operators or enterprises.  We are now announcing the availability of Cisco Policy Suite version 7.5 for download.  With it, operators will benefitfromNFV-based policy enforcement and new access selection technologies.  These new capabilities are enabling service providers to not only use policy software to open new services and markets, but they are also providing policy to the handset to ensure the best access method for the end user.

In the area of NFV, Cisco Policy Suite customers will now be able to have virtualized policy with dynamic orchestration.  They benefit from simplified and accelerated service delivery so that they can target promising vertical markets (healthcare, connected car, MVNOs, etc.) with right-sized policy solutions. In addition, the new Cisco Access Policy Solution (CAPS) extends the value of policy to the handset, driving network-awareness to device capabilities to meet SP's offload and user experience objectives.   These new capabilities in Cisco Policy Suite create better efficiencies for our service provider customers and enable them to optimize the end users experience and enter new markets for increased revenues.

One customer who is using their NFV architecture for new business opportunities is Spark New Zealand, with a VoLTE trial.   My colleague, Jim O'Leary, discusses the demonstration in his blog.

Learn more about Cisco Policy Suite version 7.5 on our website and download our latest infographic.