An-Najah National University Faculty of Graduate Studies Applying Virtualized Evolved Packet Core in Palestinian Mobile Operators By Khawla Daraghmeh Supervisor Dr. Saed Tarapiah Co-Supervisor Dr. Shadi Atalla This Thesis is Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Engineering Management, Faculty of Graduate Studies, Al-Najah National University, Nablus - Palestine. 2019 ii Applying Virtualized Evolved Packet Core in Palestinian Mobile Operators By Khawla Daraghmeh This Thesis was Defended Successfully on 3/2/2019 and approved by: Defense Committee Members Signature 1. Dr. Saed Tarapiah / Supervisor .…….……..… 2. Dr. Shadi Atalla / Co–Supervisor …….….…….. 3. Dr. Mohammed Hussien / External Examiner ...……………. 4. Dr. Mohammed Othman / Internal Examiner …...…………. iii االهداء ي عمى اتاىدي تخرجي الى ابي وامي مصدر فرحتي في دنيتي رضائيم غاية ال تدرك واشكر اخو .ماقدمو لي انتم فرحتي جميعاً iv الشكر والتقدير الميم لك الحمد حمدا كثيرا طيبا مباركا فيو، ملء السموات وملء األرض، وملء ما شئت من شيء العبد، وكمنا لك عبد، أشكرك ربي عمى نعمك التي ال تعد، بعد، أىل الثناء والمجد، أحق ما قال وآالئك التي ال تحد، أحمدك ربي وأشكرك عمى أن يسرت لي إتمام ىذا البحث عمى الوجو الذي .أرجو أن ترضى بو عني انمشرفال ثم أتوجو بالشكر إلى من رعاني طالبا في برنامج الماجستير، ومعدا ىذا البحث بعد اهلل -الفضل ملي مذان، السعد طربية والدكتور شادي عطااهللالدكتور: األستاذ نالفاضال مني معمى البحث والباحث مذ كان الموضوع عنوانا وفكرة إلى أن صار رسالة وبحثا. فمي -تعالى .الشكر كمو والتقدير والعرفان اعدة وزودنا وقدم لنا العون ومد لنا يد المس البحث وكذلك نشكر كل من ساعد عمى إتمام ىذا .نعيم الحوساني ونخص بالذكر األستاذ البحث بالمعمومات الالزمة إلتمام ىذا وأتقدم بشكري الجزيل في ىذا اليوم إلى أساتذتي الموقرين في لجنة المناقشة رئاسة وأعضاء لتفضميم عمي بقبول مناقشة ىذه الرسالة، فيم أىل لسد خمميا وتقويم معوجيا وتيذيب نتوآتيا .بانة عن مواطن القصور فييا، سائال اهلل الكريم أن يثيبيم عني خيراواإل v االقرار أنا الموقع أدناه، مقّدم الرسالة التي تحمل العنوان: Applying Virtualized Evolved Packet Core in Palestinian Mobile Operators الخاص، باستثناء مــا تمــت االشارة أقر بأن ما اشتممت عميو ىذه األطروحة إنما ىو نتاج جيدي إليو حيثما ورد. وأن ىذه الرسالة كاممة، أو اي جزء منيا لم يقدم من قبل لنيل اي درجة او لقب عممي او بحثي لدى أي مؤسسة تعميمية أو بحثية أخرى. Declaration The work provided in this thesis, unless otherwise referenced, is the researcher‟s own work, and has not been submitted elsewhere for any other degree or qualification. Student’s name: :اسم الطالب Signature: :التوقيع Date: :التاريخ vi List of Contents NO Contents Pages Dedication iii Acknowledgement iv Declaration v List of Tables ix List of Figures x List of Abbreviations xii Abstract xv Chapter One: Introduction 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Research Problem 2 1.1 Research Questions 4 1.1 Research Objectives 5 1.1 Structure of Thesis 5 Chapter Two: Literature Review 7 1.1 Literature Review 7 1.1 Data Demand 7 1.1 Data Services 10 1.1.1 Video Service 10 1.1.1 IoT (Internet of Things) 11 1.1.1 Big Data 11 1.1.1 OTT (Over the Top) 12 2.4 Mobile Broadband Networks 13 2.5 NFV/SDN Concepts 16 2.6 Legacy EPC Network 17 2.6.1 MME (Mobility Management Entity) 18 2.6.2 HSS (Home Subscriber Server) 18 2.6.3 PCRF (Policy and Charging Rules Function) 18 2.6.4 SGW (Serving Gateway) 19 2.6.5 PGW (Packet Gateway) 19 2.7 NFV Role on EPC Transformation 19 2.8 Business Models 21 2.8.1 Enterprise Model 22 2.8.2 Deployment Model 23 2.8.3 Service Model 23 2.9 NFV and SDN Models Review 24 2.10 Related Work 26 Chapter Three: Research Methodology 31 1.1 Overview 31 vii 1.1 Research Approach 32 1.1.1 Phenomenology 33 1.1.1 Interviews 35 1.1 EPC Selection Excel Model 36 1.1.1 Readiness Survey 36 1.1.1 Model Rating Matrix 37 1.1.1 Cost Input 38 1.1.1 Cost Index 38 1.1.1 Cost Summary 39 1.1.3 Weighting Matrix 39 Chapter Four: Case Study 40 1.1 Introduction 40 1.1 Ooredoo Palestine IP network 41 1.1 Core Network Ooredoo Palestine SWOT Matrix 42 1.1.1 SOWT Analysis 42 1.1.1 SOWT Aanalysis Strategies 44 Chapter Five: EPC Models 48 1.1 Introduction 48 1.1 Network Function Virtualized Infrastructure as a Service (NFVIaaS) 49 1.1 Vitalized Network Software as a Service (VNSaaS) 53 1.1 Vitalized Network Platform as a Service (VNPaaS) 54 1.1 Owned NFV 57 1.3 Owned Legacy System 59 Chapter Six: Targeted KPIs 61 3.1 Cost 61 3.1 Quality 62 3.1 Time to Market, Value Proposition, and Complexity 63 3.1 Security 65 3.1 Regulation 66 Chapter Seven: Research Analysis 68 1.1 Company Readiness 68 1.1 KPIs Weight 75 1.1 EPC_NFV Models Rating 77 1.1.1 Models Cost Analysis 77 1.1.1 Time to Market 80 1.1.1 Quality 85 1.1.1 Security 91 1.1.1 Value Proposition 92 1.1.3 Management Complexity 93 1.1.1 Operation Complexity 95 1.1.7 Regulation Issues 97 viii 1.1.7 Regulation polices 97 Chapter Eight: Results 99 7 Results 99 CHAPTER NINE: Conclusion and Recommendations 101 7.1 Conclusion 101 7.1 Recommendations 103 References 106 Appendix A: Readiness Survey 114 Appendix B: Models Rating Related to KPIs 117 Appendix C: Cost Input 121 Appendix D: Cost Index 127 Appendix E: KPIs Weight 129 ب الملخص ix List of Tables No Tables Pages Table 1 Generation Sole Service Differentiator Weaknesses 14 Table 2 Control difference between NFV models 46 Table 3 EPC CapEx & OpEx 79 Table 4 KPIs weight and models rate 99 Table 5 Models final results 100 Table 6 Risk identification 104 Table 7 Residual Risk Assessment 105 x List of Figures No Figures Pages Figure 1 Forecasted MENA and Global Penetration out of population 8 Figure 2 Unique subscribers in MENA in millions 8 Figure 3 MENA subscriber penetration by sub-region, Q2 2017 9 Figure 4 Technology migration in MENA Percentage of broadband connections 9 Figure 5 Bandwidth and latency requirements of potential 5G use cases 15 Figure 6 SDN/ NFV Wipro solution 16 Figure 7 Legacy Evolved Packet core 17 Figure 8 Evolved Packet Core (EPC) 20 Figure 9 EPC Virtualized Network Model 20 Figure 10 The business models in the firm 22 Figure 11 Control difference between NFV models 48 Figure 12 EPC virtualization based on NFV 58 Figure 13 Ambition toward virtualization EPC_NFV 69 Figure 14 Company strategy point of view 70 Figure 15 EPC_NFV Involvement in company proposition 71 Figure 16 EPC_NFV Important roles in Enabling/support new Technologies 72 Figure 17 Virtualization positive impacts on operation excellence 73 Figure 18 Transformation challenges 74 Figure 19 Company expectation from transformation (EPC_NFV) 74 Figure 20 KPIs weight of Business Strategy 76 Figure 21 KPIs weight of transformation Trigger 77 Figure 22 KPIs weight for Technical Deployment Approach 77 Figure 23 OpEx rate 79 Figure 24 CapEx rate 80 Figure 25 Models' rating based on reducing time to market for new services 81 Figure 26 Rating Models' based on shorter deployment duration 81 Figure 27 Rating Models' based on horizontal scalability 82 Figure 28 Rating models based on supporting new technologies trends and development 83 Figure 29 Models' rating based on supporting platform openness and APIs 84 xi Figure 30 Models' rating based on optimizing supply chain issues 84 Figure 31 Models' rate for efficient SLA model 85 Figure 32 Models „rate for less interoperability issues 86 Figure 33 Rating for higher service availability for end customer 86 Figure 34 Models' rate for service capabilities and higher service control 87 Figure 35 Models' rate for application stability 88 Figure 36 Models' rate for supports DR (Geo Redundancy) strategy 88 Figure 37 Models' rate for supporting data management and analytics purposes 89 Figure 38 Models' rate in supporting effective service chain flow 90 Figure 39 Models' rate inefficient troubleshooting time 91 Figure 40 Models' rating in robustness against security threats 91 Figure 41 Models' rating in Supporting Business vision to extend value proposition 92 Figure 42 Models' rating in R&D improvement and innovation effectiveness 93 Figure 43 Models' rating according to low requirement for expertise in HW operation management 94 Figure 44 Models' rating according to requirement for expertise in SW operation management 94 Figure 45 Models' rating according to required operation staff reduction 95 Figure 46 Models' rating according to reduction in complexities in implementation & integration 96 Figure 47 Models' rating according to reduction in complexities in running operation 96 Figure 48 Models' rating for effectivness according to existing regulation policies 97 Figure 49 Models' rating based on regulation recommendation 98 xii List of Abbreviations 1G First Generation 2.5G Represent GPRS 3.5G High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 3G Third Generation 3GPP 3rd Generation Partnership Project 4G Fourth Generation 5G Fifth Generation 5G Fifth Generation AAA Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting API Application Programming Interface APN Access Point Name B2B Business to Business B2C Business to consumer CapEx Capital Expenditures CDN Content delivery network CPEs Customer premises equipment CTO Chief Technology Officer DC-HSPA Dual Carrier-High Speed Packet Access, DPI Data Packet inspection within PS core DR Disaster Recovery EBITDA Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization eNB Evolved Node B eNodeBs Element of an LTE Radio Access Network EPC Evolved Packet Core EVO BSC Evolution Base Station Controller FTTH Fiber to the Home GB Gigabyte GDP Gross domestic product GGSN Gateway GPRS Support Node GPRS General Packet Radio Services GW Gateway HLR Home Location Register HSS Home Subscriber Server HW Hardware IaaS Infrastructure as a service ICT Information and communication technology IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem IoT Internet of Things xiii IP Internet Protocol IPS intrusion prevention system IT Information Technology KPI Key Performance Indicator LTE Long-Term Evolution M2M Machine to Machin Mbps Megabits MENA Middle East and North Africa MGW Media Gateway MKT Market MME Mobility Management Entity MSC Mobile Switching Centre NaaS Network as a service NFV Network Function Virtualization NFVI Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure OpEx Operating Expenses OSS Operations Support System OTT Over the Top PaaS Platform as a service PCRF Policy and Charging Rules Function PDN Private Data Network PGW Packet Gateway PS Packet Switch Q2 Second Quarter of the year Q4 Furth Quarter of the year QoS Quality of Service R&D Research and development RAN Radio Access Network RFID Radio-frequency identification S1-MME Interface for the control plane protocol between E- UTRAN and MME0 S1-U Interface between E-UTRAN & Serving GW S5 Interface is used between an S-GW and P-GW located within the same administrative domain (non-roaming) SaaS Software as a service SAE System Architecture Evolution SDN Software Defined Network SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node SGW Serving Gateway SLA Service-Level Agreement SMS Short Message Service xiv SO Strategies Strengths Opportunities Strategies SOWT Strengths Opportunities Weakness Threats ST Strategies Strengths Threats Strategies SW Software UE User Equipment vEPC Virtualized Evolved Packet Core VM Virtual Machines VNF Virtual Network Function VNFaaS Virtual Network Function as a Service VNPaaS Virtual Network Platform as a Service VNSaaS Virtual Network Software as a Service VPN Virtual Private Network Wi-Fi Wireless fidelity WLAN Wireless local area network WO Weakness Opportunities Strategies WT Weakness Threats Strategies xv Applying Virtualized Evolved Packet Core in Palestinian Mobile Operators By Khawla Daraghmeh Supervisor Dr. Saed Tarapiah Co-Supervisor Dr. Shadi Atalla Abstract Palestine is a developing country suffers from occupation and its obstacles in different domains. Telecom industry is one of the fields that struggles from existing regulation which forced by occupation. In addition to global declining in telecom sector profit despite increasing in data demand. Thus, telecom operators had to find solution that overcome profit declining at the same time to handle increment of data traffic with minimal cost. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is one of the technologies that proposed to minimize the effect of profit decline and traffic increment. NFV technology is new trend to get over the infrastructure challenges in introducing new services and managing the rapid growth in the data services demand. The main goal of this study is to differentiate between service models: Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure as a Service (NFVIaaS), Virtualized Network Software as a Service (VNSaaS), Virtualized Network Platform as a Service (VNPaaS), and on-primes models (owned NFV, legacy system) by assessing models aspects (operational, management and commercial), and provide comprehensive recommendations for the case study in terms of the best model to deploy in the network and other specific NFV case considerations. xvi A module was developed with stages of assessments that ends up with the recommended Evolved Packet Core (EPC) model that can be applied in the operator based on operators‟ case drivers, the first one is operator readiness stage that gives an indication of operator readiness level to transform toward virtualized EPC. The second stage is Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) weight assessment that subject to business, technical, and transformation perspectives. However, KPIs weight will differ from operator to another according to their priorities and business objectives. The final stage is models rating engine for each KPI, this engine contains two main parts: the first one is qualitative KPIs rate, as models were rated for each KPI based on studies, expert‟s experience and vendor‟s feedback. The second rate part is quantitative KPIs related to investment and operational expenses for each model, however, the quantitative will differ among operators based on their cost drivers. At the end of applying the module on a case study, the first outcome is to conclude about company readiness to transform to NFV, as its depend totally on operator judge whether to proceed in virtualization strategy or not and define the related risk of this strategy. The second outcome is to define the recommended model for EPC transformation based on KPIs weight and cost drivers. Ooredoo Palestine is a Palestinian mobile network operator. Which operating in very challenging markets with strong competition between Palestinian services providers, in addition to illegal competition came from other operators such as Cellcom Israel, and Orange Israel. xvii The module was applied on Ooredoo Palestine case to get the most recommended EPC model. The results showed that Ooredoo Palestine has high readiness level to transform toward virtualization, and the recommended EPC model for Ooredoo Palestine is the owned NFV model. Further, the study showed the risk assessment and residual risk assessment of virtualization transformation related to Ooredoo Palestine case. In general virtualization is a key strategy applied on core network to reduce the impact of telecom profit declining, the study focused on applying virtualization on packet core network for Ooredoo Palestine as this strategy could reduce the impact of challenges that face Palestinian operators 45 Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Overview The demand on data services grows very fast. However, Boniecki et al. (2016) clarified even with rapid growth in data services demand, the mobile operator revenue growth struggles, as well as the nets profit margin and Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) margin are declining, as traditional services are under pressure and mobile operators have significant investment commitments as they are deploying mobile broadband networks to handle the huge traffic demand increment. The decline of profit margin and business continuity investment obligations, forced the mobile operator to search out for new solutions to enhance the operational cost and secure the needed network capabilities to fulfill the service demand. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) stand as one of these solutions to handle the data demand with cost effective approach, that optimizes and enhances operational cost, capital expenditures cost, and profit margin. This Thesis studying NFV service and on-primes models. In addition to find out the best service or on-primes that can be applied for Ooredoo mobile operator at Palestine. The importance of this study comes from two main points represented in that virtualization is new trend raised as a solution that can reduce the impact of many threats face telecom sector which will be clarified later in literature review. However, this study clarifies the use cases of virtualization strategy in emerging market and the 46 impact of this strategy on commercial, operational and management aspects based on virtualization and SDN experts who discussed Evolved Packet Core (EPC) (virtualized and legacy models) in many structured interviews in addition to previous experience for virtualization and SDN technologies to decide the possibility of applying virtualization on EPC system which leads to decide which business model is the best to be applied on . The second importance of this study comes from that operators can benefit from this study and reflect its results on their situation to find out best fit EPC model related to its conditions, for Palestinian operators the study shows an opportunity to reduce the impact of occupation regulations as it will be shown later. 1.2 Research Problem The global telecom sector is under pressure of being a low profit business. As the telecom operator‟s profit Margins are declining. Thus, the mobile operators enforced to search out for any applicable solution to optimize and manage cost efficiently. Mobile operators today provide Mobile broadband services over Third Generation (3G) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks using a legacy mobile packet core architecture known as the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). The EPC has been deployed by utilizing physical various functions components which will be explained later in literature review chapter. Further, the remarkable penetration of smartphones, tablets, laptops, data demanded applications, and Machine to Machine (M2M) devices, leads to significant growth on data services consumption, this demand comes to be a real challenge for mobile 47 operators who have low profit margin. In emerging market, the tough competition and low Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rates result out that the customer base expects to pay significantly lower prices regardless the real cost of services. All these facts are forcing mobile operators to find better cost effective solution to handle the demand properly and enhance the profit margin or at least to maintain it at acceptable levels. The mobile operators at Palestine are operating in very challenging markets with strong competition between Palestinian services providers, in addition to illegal competition came from other operators such as Cellcom Israel, and Orange Israel. Moreover, Palestinian people are internet educated users with high penetration of smartphones expected to reach more than 50%after introducing 3G benchmarked with Jordan market according to Bader (2011), and they were being wait very long time to have mobile broadband services network, thus by introducing the 3G services, a huge mobile data services demand are expected along with introducing new mobile data services such as M2M, this demand shall be addressed with effective solution balancing, the quality of services and cost of service. Additional constraints are related to Palestinian market situation shall be considered in defining the best solution to handle the 3G forecasted demand efficiently, such as the supply chain complexity due to Israeli control on importing telecom Hardware (HW) from outside that makes the expansion and scalability using legacy packet core are very hard and with potential of high delay that impacting negatively the quality of service and might delay or prevent from introducing new revenue stream services that 48 demanded by market. However, this kind of supply chain complexity and customs control restrictions are applied on other countries and markets. In order to assess these challenges, this research will study the best practices for transforming from Legacy EPC to virtualized Packet Core (vEPC) of NFV, focusing on Virtualized EPC (vEPC) aiming to find out the most applicable model to optimize network costs while improving or at least maintaining the same performance. In addition to support new open ecosystem to introduce new innovative revenue steam services in the market. Further, as Palestinian operators are applying 3G services, they have to make sure that any investments have been planned today are supporting the future transformation toward the Fourth Generation (4G) and Fifth Generation (5G) networks. 1.3 Research Questions This research aims mainly to answer the following questions 1. What are the EPC NFV business models and its use cases in the emerging market? 2. What are the suitable management models to transform the legacy evolved packet core network to NFV at emerging markets? 3. How NFV will contribute in resources optimization and its impact on the company overall performance operationally and commercially? 4. What the considerations that shall be taken in account in deploying Virtualized EPC commercially? 49 1.4 Research Objectives The main objectives of this study are as follows: 1. Study different EPC NFV models to deploy evolved packet core at emerging market. 2. Find out the best business model to deploy virtualized evolved packet core in mobile operators at emerging markets. 3. Define the briars and limitations of deploying NFV. 4. Assess NFV operational and commercial impact. 1.5 Structure of Thesis The research covers the following chapters: 1. Chapter one contains a description for research problem, research main questions and main objectives. 2. Chapter two shows new technology trends, also studies related to virtualization and its impact in addition static studies shows telecom sector trends around world 3. Chapter three describes the methodology that was followed in this research to achieve objectives and goals of research. 4. Chapter four describes case study of research which is Ooredoo Palestine and existing situation in addition to problems that is related to research also SOWT analysis for case study. 50 5. Chapter five describes all business models related to EPC with their definitions and use cases, specifications, and pros and cons which contains cloud deployment models and on primes models. 6. Chapter six clarifies all key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to compare between EPC models. these KPIs almost covers operation , commercial and management sides to ensure choosing best fit EPC model according to these defined KPIs. 7. Chapter seven contains research analysis which depend on developed mathematical model can be used by any operator to choose best fit EPC model , in this research the mathematical model was applied in Ooredoo case to get the best result for EPC model. The research analysis clarify the readiness of Ooredoo Palestine to move toward virtualization, also weight of KPIs related to Ooredoo Palestine (in terms of management, operation and business transformation trigger perspectives), also the EPC models rate for each KPI. 8. Chapter eight contains the result was gotten from mathematical model related to Ooredoo Palestine case which represented in the most fit EPC that can be applied to the case. 9. Chapter nine contains conclusion of research and recommendations, risk analysis and residual risk assessment which give operator main outlines to transform EPC system. 51 Chapter Two Literature Review 2.1 Literature Review Telecom industry started in the beginning to connect people, nowadays, it is to connect people and things. The majority of connection was legacy services (voice, Short Message Service (SMS)), but after evaluation in telecom industry, the game changed and data services appear to connect the unconnected. This section summarizes the current legacy EPC challenges of handling the rapid increase in data demand and new services, and gives a brief about NFV and SDN related studies. 2.2 Data Demand The data demand is growing fast according to GSMA (2017a), the penetration of unique mobile subscribers will increase from 65% in 2016 to reach 73% by 2020, while the total SIM connections is expected to jump from 100% in 2016 to 112% by 2020, out of this the number of mobile broadband connections have potential to reach 73% by 2020 from 55% in 2016. Reference to GSMA (2017b), the mobile subscriber‟s penetration is below global average, and it is expected to grow from 63% in 2016 to reach 65% in 2020. Based on GSMA (2017b), Figure 1 among years shows the forecasted MENA and Figure 2 shows global penetration out of population. 52 Figure 1. Forecasted MENA and Global Penetration out of population. Figure 2. Unique subscribers in MENA in millions. As GSMA (2017b) report, Figure 3 illustrates the unique subscriber penetration at level of sub – regions from Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as Second Quarter (2Q) 2017, the other Arab states that represent (Comoros, Djibouti, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen) has the lowest mobile subscriber penetration of 46% which is below the MENA average and global average. 53 Figure 3. MENA subscriber penetration by sub-region, Q2 2017. The subscribers in MENA region are continuing to migrate to mobile broadband services, thus, GSMA (2017b), showed that by end of the Furth Quarter (Q4) 2018 the 3G was expected to be the dominant technology as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4. Technology migration in MENA Percentage of broadband connections. 54 Reference to COMCEC (2016) report, monthly universal data traffic in 2016 extended to reach 88.7 billion gigabytes which reflects the annual rate growth of 30% in the previous five years. Accordingly this will lead to significant growth in the universal data traffic by 47% from 2016 to 2020. Thus it is expected to reach 194 billion gigabytes. Based on this exponential traffic progress, Internet traffic will raise in MENA (27% compound annual growth rate) reaching 10.9 billion gigabytes monthly which leads to rise the data usage average by each unique mobile subscriber from 1 Gigabyte (GB) in 2016 to around 12 GB by 2022. 2.3 Data Services The revolution on data services such as video services, Internet of Things, big data, and Over The Top (OTT) leads to exponential growth on data demand that requires another revolution at mobile broadband technology side to fulfill continuing data growth. 2.3.1 Video Service Based on COMCEC (2017), nowadays, video services have the major portion of the data demand in Forth Generation (4G) and Fiber to The Home (FTTH) networks. Youtube traffic dominate the high share of video traffic beside video on demand platforms and rental services such as Netflix, and Facebook streaming. The video services demand shows high potential increase due to massive events such as festivals. A stable high 55 bandwidth session for quite a lot of minutes, good packet throughput, accepted packet loss rate, and minimal jitter are required to maintain video quality service. 2.3.2 IoT (Internet of Things) As Omnes et al. (2015), has defined Internet of Things (IoT) is an innovative model where a huge number of things/objects connected through one or different networks to each other, it is about connected physical elements networking with each other to support or enable new services include but not limited to machine-to-machine (M2M) and person to-computer communications (P2C). IoT devices cover a lot of domains such as utility metering, home automation, automobiles, health monitoring devices, surveillance systems and public safety systems with new smart devices and applications being created. As it promises to monitor all working conditions through IoT devices of different engineering and functional structures and optimize it accordingly. By 2025 the IoT nodes are expected to connect most of the items, most of them are necessary in our life. 2.3.3 Big Data According to Amin and Feizi (2014), big data is a functional term used to express situation where data volume, velocity and variety exceed an organization‟s capacity to storage or analyze for precise and on time decisions. Big Data every moment is generated since the beginning of data communication. Big Data is produced from all digital events, social media, 56 machine-to machine interactions, metering events, and call detail records. While environmental sensing, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems, sensors and mobile devices transmit it. All these types of data grow very fast due to increase on its application demand. However, most of these raw data are in an unstructured form semi structured from social media events. The unstructured need a complex algorithms and computing efforts using special servers to enhance extracting the valuable information by filtering through the Big Data's noise that came from the massive volume, variety, and velocity. As the goal of algorithms to put an unstructured data into structured tables with rows and columns, in order to extract insights from this massive data. Thus, in Big Data projects often rely on data science and machine learning to overcome the challenges that can be addressed in five dimensions include the volume of data, the second is data flow velocity in all ways, the variety of data types and sources increment characterize the third one, data seems to be unstable so verifiability of data with sundered peak represent the fourth challenge, these four challenges lead to the fifth which is complexity in data processing. 2.3.4 OTT (Over the Top) As Boubendir et al. (2015), mentioned that OTT service made dramatic jump in internet multimedia traffic, and it is expected to keep rise as it will reach 75% from total traffic. OTT can be defined as “a service, content, or an application (e.g., Skype, YouTube and Facebook ...etc.) that is delivered 57 to the users over the open Internet.” the definition, means that everything delivered through open Internet considered an OTT service. Even though of Rapid development of the telecommunication system, the OTT services stand in for outmoded services, and service providers has a challenge to migrate to next level of modernized OTT services for better utilization and monetization for these communication channels. However, legacy OTT applications are armed by cloud capabilities which current network architectures are unable to support. The challenge is to handle and adopt with dynamicity of OTT application services with a static nature of network architectures, which requires a mobile operator to transform the network to a level of more flexibility to manage the unexpected OTT user‟s behavior. 2.4 Mobile Broadband Networks This rapid demand on data services and the appearance of new innovative data applications has accelerated the development cycle of mobile broadband technologies to meet this growing demand. According to Majeed and Phil (2015), 3G Network is considered as a first Mobile broadband network used to carry broadband data services with throughput of 42 Mbps per cell (DC-HSPA+), but this wasn‟t sufficient enough to satisfy the fast growth in data services demand that requires mobility, therefore, 4G mobile broadband network was introduced to handle data demand with higher speed up to 100 Mbps, but new innovative data applications (IoT, M2M, ..etc.,) would require both higher throughput and 58 low latency which is beyond the capabilities of current 4G Networks. 5G will stand to fulfill these applications requirement and the data quantum leap. As Warren and Dewar (2014), mentioned 5G promises to introduce a „hyperconnected society‟ where the mobile totally changes people life. Table 1 shows the Evolution of Mobile Generations. (Warren and Dewar, 2014). Table 1. Generation Sole Service Differentiator Weaknesses. Generation Sole Service Differentiator Weaknesses 1G Analogue phone calls Mobility Poor spectral efficiency, major security issues 2G Digital phone calls and messaging Secure, mass adoption Limited data rates – difficult to support demand for internet/e-mail 3G Phone calls, messaging, data Better internet experience Real performance failed to match hype, failure of WAP for internet access 3.5G Phone calls, messaging, broadband data Broadband internet, applications Tied to legacy, mobile specific architecture and protocols 4G All-IP services (including voice, messaging) Faster broadband internet, lower latency 5G use cases are challenged to low latency and high bandwidth requirements, Figure 5 shows the potential use cases of 5G (Warren and Dewar, 2014). 59 Figure 5. Bandwidth and latency requirements of potential 5G use cases. However, to enhance end user mobile broadband experience, the mobile broadband technologies development has been focused on spectrum efficient utilization and radio access capabilities, and operators are developing 4G networks through rollout of LTE-Advanced technologies besides doing a trails for 5G networks. While network architect, the operators considered the deployment of network function virtualization (NFV), software defined networks (SDN), and heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Thus, NFV/SDN technologies will play a major role in the evolution of mobile networks and mainly in the core network evolution. 60 2.5 NFV/SDN Concepts In this context, it was required to develop a new model of infrastructure that support these new services ( Video Streaming , OTT, IoT) and overcome its challenges in proper modeling that take into consideration the need for resources optimization (capacity, cost, and time). Thus, the SDN and NFV concepts were developed to be the base of this change. Based on Omnes et al. (2015) definition Software-Defined Networking (SDN) can be considered as a tool for dynamic resources control via programming network functions, with control layer functions, by using software technology and thanks to novel interfaces. Figure 6 shows Wipro (2018), solution SDN/NFV architecture for EPC. Figure 6. SDN/ NFV Wipro solution. 61 As ETSI (2013), defined Network Function Virtualization (NFV) as a technology aims to transform the legacy architect networks by evolving standard IT virtualization technology to consolidate many network equipment types onto industry standard high volume servers, switches and storage. Together NFV and SDN are comprehensive solutions to get over the infrastructure challenges in introducing new services and handling the rapid growth in the data services demand. 2.6 Legacy EPC Network EPC is IP-based service provisioning for Mobile broadband network. It reduces the hierarchy between mobile network elements. As Jain et al. (2016), clarified the current legacy EPC architecture as shown in Figure 7 consists of Mobile Management Entity (MME), Serving Gateway (SGW), Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW), Policy Control Rules Function (PCRF) and Home Subscriber Server (HSS).However, based on Verizon Network Infrastructure Planning (2016), the legacy EPC has been built based on vendor special hardware and software platforms design. Figure 7. Legacy Evolved Packet core. 62 These massive network elements have serious challenges coming from long design, development, and installation phases which lead to: slower time-to- market of introducing new products and services, operation overhead and management complexity, and higher CapEx to revenue ratio in handling the market demand. According to Firmin (2016), flowing are the elements of EPC with its main functions. 2.6.1 MME (Mobility Management Entity) The MME is answerable for of all the Control plane functions associated with user‟s mobility and security. Relative to security to end-user which start with authentication beside initiation and ciphering ending with integrity protection algorithms. All signaling process are managed by MME in addition to manage the tracing and paging of user equipment in idle mode. (Firmin, 2016). 2.6.2 HSS (Home Subscriber Server) HSS is a data base includes user‟s information beside its management role in mobility specific in user authentication and access authorization. (Firmin, 2016). 2.6.3 PCRF (Policy and Charging Rules Function) PCRF works in real-time to manage policy rules in networks through many strategies such as prioritize network traffic in dynamic way, managing needed information for revenue assurance and bandwidth. According to 63 charging resolutions it is responsible for policy control and flow. (Firmin, 2018). 2.6.4 SGW (Serving Gateway) The SGW represent data plane which is responsible to carry IP traffic between the User Equipment (UE) and other networks. It is the interconnect point between the radio network and the evolved packet core. It is logically connected to PGW. (Firmin, 2016). 2.6.5 PGW (Packet Gateway) PGW is the anchor point between the EPC and the external IP networks. These networks are called Packet Data Network (PDN). (Firmin, 2016). 2.7 NFV Role on EPC Transformation The importance of EPC come from its architecture that splits the control and data planes in the mobile broadband network that provides fast network performance, and reduces the hierarchy between mobile networks elements .EPC hierarchy is shown in Figure 8 based on Penttinen (2012), architecture. However, handling huge growth in data traffic using such legacy architecture requires high investment in vendor‟s special hardware in addition to high operational expenses and complexity in service delivery. 64 Figure 8. Evolved Packet Core (EPC). Therefore, according to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (2017), increasing gap between capacity and demand is a significant sign for deploying new approaches and new network architects that can enable mobile operators to handle more traffic with less cost. NFV raised as a new technology provides an efficient solution which can enhance the flexibility required by mobile operators to adapt and accommodate this dynamic market demand. Figure 9 shows NFV concept. Figure 9. EPC Virtualized Network Model. 65 According to Telecoms (2016), an annual industry survey aimed to highlight new telecom trends and issues that affect the sector by sharing opinions of telecoms industry professional. One of these aspects was NFV, the results indicates that around 32% of these companies agreed that NFV was a priority technology investment for the company in 2016. Another important investigation that audience was asked about NFV was their approaches to NFV; 40% of all respondents clarified that they were investing about use case scenarios, 24% their trials were undertaken, 15% of them had already lunched their scenarios while 15% said that they didn‟t have the required resources. However, 6% showed that they uninterested in rolling out NFV, another important finding from this survey that around 45% responded indicated that the virtual EPC had the highest priority to be lunched as one of NFV use cases. However, there are a lot of models were developed to get benefit from the NFV to support the mobile operators in handling the capacity, in this research will study the most applicable business model based on management perspective for mobile operators in Palestine market. 2.8 Business Models According to Osterwalder et al.. (2005), business model is the umbrella that leads to the shape of business through different strategies and enterprise models, the business model is a tool to achieve the business logic and the firm objectives by managing set of objects, concepts and their relationships. Moreover, the business model defines the value provided to 66 customer and its financial consequences, therefore the effective business model that achieves the best value to customer with targeted financial KPIs in the organization. Figure 10 shows an example of the business model concept in an organization and its potential elements and inputs. (Osterwalder et al., 2005). Figure 10. The business models in the firm. 2.8.1 Enterprise Model The Enterprise model is a set of activities and processes used to manage the business in an organization. The enterprise models have different types; depend on the nature of organization business, such as operation models, deployment models …etc. In ICT industry enterprise models have different sorts which can form the business model of organization such as deployment and service models. 67 2.8.2 Deployment Model Based on OpenText (2016), deployment model is one of the important terms that represents enterprise model for Information Communication Technology (ICT) .There are many methods to define the element of the model. Thus there are no clearly descriptions or standards. So deployment models would be defined based on field of the work. For Telecom area deployment models are: on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and managed/hosted. 2.8.3 Service Model Based on Wu at el (2017), a service model in general describes the characters of the service in a communicable approach. Service model has two main types of models which are customer service model and service delivery model, customer service model is related to define a service provided to end user by operator‟s network. A service delivery model is used by a network operator to define and manage how a service is engineered in the network. It can be used by a human operator (such as via a management station) or by a software tool to instruct network components. Such models are sometimes referred to as "network service models" and are consumed by "external systems" such as Operations Support System (OSS). A service delivery model is expressed as a core set of parameters that are common across a network type and technology: additional features that are specific to the configuration of individual vendor equipment or proprietary protocols would be defined in 68 extensions or augmentations of the model. Service delivery models include technology-specific modules. Thesis focuses on cloud service models: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). 2.9 NFV and SDN Models Review The researchers paid attention to benefits of NFV & SDN, so many models are developed to maximize the benefits of them in deploying new services at different use cases. There have been several proposals and designs for network components using principles of NFV, most of the researches were discussed developing new NFV architectures for mobile network and its components for better resources utilization and cost optimization taking in consideration the service and network performance aspects. Riggio et al. (2015), developed an NFV–based management and orchestration framework for WLANs networks; as well they developed a service function chain algorithm for better resources utilization. While the researchers Li and Chen (2015), highlighted the increasing the capital and operational expense of service providers in legacy networks, in addition to network complexity, the authors presented the need of moving from legacy network to NFV through analyzing a survey of different approaches of NFV, they concluded that deploying the software-defined NFV architecture with applying its application of service function chaining no more needs for middlebox, which support more flexibility in the network infrastructure, that ending 69 with cost & resource optimization in processing the growing demand and traffic. On other hand, there are other studies such as ETSI (2013), which focused on developing the most effective business management models for deploying the NFV among the mobile network components. Moreover, proper model for each real use case was discussed, the management models that were discussed: Network Function Virtualized Infrastructure as a Service (NFVIaaS) where the providers offer infrastructure as a service, Virtualized Network Function as a Service (VNFaaS), this model the network functions will be provided as a service, Virtualized Network Platform as a Service (VNPaaS), this model provides platform as a service which is more flexible and scalable than VNFaaS because it provides the customer the ability to add VNF and control function .etc.). While Manthena (2015), proposed Network as a Service (NaaS) as evolutionary approach of cloud implementation strategy that support a gradual deployment scenario through a highly complementary co-existence between NFV and SDN technologies and the most major existing network technologies. Bilal et al. (2016), analyzed a real life mobile data network, concluding that resource utilization is varying based on network scale, showing that even with large data demand and large data plan, the virtualization with dynamic scaling of node size based on load is more cost efficient. The study showed that vertical scaling with resizing the VMs is the most proper and cost 70 efficient approach for small scale networks of dedicated resources, rather than horizontal scaling of adding more VMs. As 4G Americas (2014), mentioned that the separation of control and data planes enables the virtualization of the separated control plane software, so SDN can act as an enabler for NFV. However, NFV can also act as an enabler for SDN because the separation between data-plane and control- plane implementations is simplified when one or both of them are implemented in software running on top of standard hardware. Cloud computing is IP based computing services that enable new approaches of offering services such as (i.e., IaaS, PaaS and/or SaaS) to enterprises and consumers. While these technology trends can be merged to offer new model such as NFVIaaS, VNPaaS, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) cloud which is merging the concept of NFV and cloud services. This research sheds the light on the business models of NFV rather than the technical topology of the NFV network. 2.10 Related Work Mobile operators paid more efforts in piloting and deploying NFV use cases to overcome the declining in telecom services profits, Mobile operators are counting on NFV use cases to play major role to reduce the optimize their service‟s cost, at same time they aiming to maintain the quality of service or enhance it as much as possible, in addition to introduce new services and comply with services trend with cost efficient network using NFV. This section sheds the light on related researches that 71 discussed and analyzed the NFV role within mobile operators and its impacts on services KPIs, financial KPIs (CapEx/OpEx/EBITDA), and the value proposition of introducing new services. Virag et al. (2016), discussed the main strategic options that Mobile operators has to think about to reconfigure its value. One of these options is the network virtualization concepts (Cloud, NFV, SDN), the research addressed the value of applying virtualization concepts on core network architect, and how this led to end to end control on network that support mobile operators to enhance the quality with effective resources management and utilization. Moreover, according to this research the NFV opens new revenue streams and support mobile operators to introduce new services for business to business, business to consumers, and beyond that to reach business to business to x services that it raised after digitization age, where the services is core part of customer/client‟ value chain, in addition to that, NFV supports mobile operator to enhance the time to market required to develop or deploy new solutions, as well as its significantly optimized their product portfolio with new offerings that targeting new markets or segments. In numbers , it‟s expected to increase the number of Mobile operators offering to more than 200% benefiting from NFV that engaged mobile operator with open APIs ecosystems, and in same time reduce time to market by more than 90% by applying agile service development methodologies with automated functionalities and high scalabilities that supported by NFV. Further, this study sees that assets sharing model of virtualization/NFV will significantly enhance the cost of 72 service and could be offered as infrastructure as a service model (wholesale revenue generator model), accordingly the study expects a revenue impact of 2%, 10% OpEx saving, and additional of 10% of revenue as CapEx per year to cover virtualization cost for the infrastructure base. Juniper (2017), had focused on what are the main aspects that mobile operator has to consider in developing its NFV business case, it‟s clear from the study that NFV role in network transformation toward agility and open ecosystems. Each mobile operator based on this paper has to conduct profit analysis for NFV for any use case before apply it on their networks, the profit analysis shall cover the expected revenue from new services that will be introduced by NFV agility and open ecosystems, in addition to the impact of NFV on scalability of existing services and products characteristics, as well as evaluate the impact of NFV and virtualization on network OpEx and CapEx required to deliver service with same or higher quality. From other prospective the operational excellence should be considered to evaluate the non-direct impacts on financial KPIs, such as reduce legacy system vendor risks, vendors leverage, degree of operation leverage. In conclusion, the paper discussed different analysis modeling that could be followed to evaluate the business case for each NFV use case. However, there is a risk assessment that should be conducted to avoid any negative impact in applying NFV. Based on Vorst et al. (2018), NFV technology is not exclusive on operators, also it can be used in ISP networks as it represents an interest when it is implemented at the edge of network which apply an opportunity 73 for ISP companies to offer new services especially in network security and service delivery. NFV could also be used in internet-facing private and internal privet networks, as NFV optimizes resources with lower cost and effective management, however NFV technology is still limited to be applied on transit networks due to its nature of network requirements. Visualization effect on business model expected to be major according to its progress in structural management through reducing the complexity of network, also virtualized infrastructure could be exploited to expand business vertically by creating new market opportunities such as capacity leasing to virtual operators and ISP providers. Pure concept for NFV technology perform a risk for network security and privacy as it breaks physical separation of networks. So attacks will be easier as physical obstacle will not be existing any more ,particularly if the vendor of hardware is not trusted, however this risk is not a stopper for NFV technology implementation .as connection will be encrypted end to end . NFV has a dramatic change on competition rules between network vendors and services provider as it unifies the hardware requirement of network so profit that comes from legacy hardware will decline and competition focus between network vendors will be on software that fit vitalization requirements with best performance in term. However NFV is an opportunity for operators to have better competitive situation in the market 74 through the ability of providing new services and meeting high demand requirements. This Research focuses on third generation evolved packet core network to find best deployment or service model that can be applied on Palestinian operators which have special political characteristics political and considered as an emerging market. 75 Chapter Three Research Methodology 3.1 Overview This research addresses a subjective experience topic that searches out for the best EPC practical model to be applied for emerging markets based on technology facts and operation experience. Thus, the analysis of research was built based on qualitative method using phenomenological interviews, and analyzed the collected data using deductive approach. This methods were used due to limited existing experts in this domain in addition to limited operators available in Palestinian market following flowchart the flowchart of research methodology. 76 3.2 Research Approach This study was built based on qualitative approach .However a quantitative approach was used in simple partial of research which will be clarified later in EPC selection model in this chapter. The research was built on phenomenology approach which depends on interviews with experts and past Experiment with virtualization in other department from network. 77 3.2.1 Phenomenology According to ( Nyberg & Berg) 2014, Phenomenology is specific qualitative study method that reads and analyzes subjective experiences of experts on their domain. It studies the opinions and the experience point of view for different persons with different experience interpretation. The philosophical basics are the core of this approach that researches the main meanings and findings of different person‟s experiences to formulate a mutual understanding and reach out the main mutual essences for all these experiences. Each experience has its own conditions and situational judgment that considered to apply what is applicable on the selected case study. The data collection in the phenomenon approach uses “phenomenological interviews” which follow three main process bracketing, phenomenological reduction, and horizontalization starting from design ending up with analysis. At early stage of research, the researcher developes his point of view, experience perception, initial expectations and assumptions in a process called bracketing that enables researchers to define the subjective experience shape of the research topic. While at phenomenological reduction process, the researcher starts studying person‟s experiences along with case details and situation to be able to describe the case and determine the applicable experiences that fit case study, ending up with data organization and experience classifications to conclude on the common 78 experience understanding of the topic and case study in a process called horizontalization. The Phenomenology approach was applied on this virtualization research as the nature of the study requires understanding the situation and other expert‟s subjective experience for different NFV models and different use cases. Thus, the research started with studying a lot of research papers about virtualization and NFV models, studying different NFV use cases for mobile operators, and focusing on the study of EPC transformation from legacy to virtualization using NFV models. In the next phase of study, the Mobile operator‟s case in Palestine were studied considering the situation aspects, local experience, and other virtualization models requirements for each case. At the end of study phase an initial understandings and expectations for research developed with full case study description, and the applicable virtualization model for the case study is determined based on the understanding of the situation and experts‟ point of view. Further, a virtualization/NFV selection model was developed to organize researches data and expert‟s experience views to support the users to conclude on understanding of which NFV model that might fit their business requirements by considering different aspects such as situation, cost, quality ….etc., and model provide user free hands to select which aspect has the higher priority in his case. 79 3.2.2 Interviews Depending on ( Nyberg & Berg) 2014, the interviews is one of the most popular approaches to collect the data for a qualitative research and main part of Phenomenology approach. There is different ways to do interviews: face to face, outbound call interviews, focus groups interviews, and expert‟s interviews. The interview could be used an pre define statements or questionnaire which is called structured interview, or via free conversations that allow for interviewer to discuss more topics and views to collect data as much as needed in a shape of unstructured interview. Moreover, the interviews enables researchers to collect the required information about the research topic and gain more information about the experience and the point of views that audience have. And as mention previously “phenomenological interviews” allow researcher to collect information about other person‟s experience. The interviews on this research were developed based on structured interview targeting an audience of PS core experts, network managers, and CTO in a mobile operator in Palestine to collect more information about situation, mobile operator expectation in Palestine and their vision toward virtualization as business transformation strategy. 80 3.3 EPC Selection Excel Model The EPC selection excel model was developed to enable the mobile operators to select the most suitable NFV Model that fit to their EPC business transformation from legacy to vEPC. The model start from readiness survey to evaluate readiness, then moves to KPIs rating, KPIs weight, and ending with recommended model meet their business needs according to the mobile operator inputs used in the model. 3.3.1 Readiness Survey 1 The readiness model sheet prepared to support the mobile operators to evaluate their readiness to get choice of start the business transformation from legacy systems to virtualization. In same time the survey support minimizing the influence of personal perceptions or any kind of bias using scientific approach. Which leads to have logical indications to start in network virtualization or to enrich mobile operator case to enhance their readiness for virtualization. The readiness stage aims to facilitate the company readiness measurements from different perspectives, starting from the level of NFV knowledge that mobile operator‟s team has, management awareness of transformation effects, team capabilities to deal with transformed systems, in addition to the operator planned strategies to get indication about their mutual impacts 1 The survey used scale (4 full comply, 3 fair comply, 2 weak comply, never comply). Refer to Appendix A 81 on each other. This thesis survey focuses on EPC system as the selected use case is transforming the core data network from legacy systems to NFV. The questions started with estimation of operator ambition for EPC-NFV technology, by short statements describe whether the operator put forward EPC-NFV for discussion . Then presented new statements to perceive the company overview of EPC- NFV effect on their business services from commercial perspective, considering the effects on service value proposition. Thus, the change challenge on the whole organization including existing systems, people and process are assessed in the statements, and consequently the impact pf NFV on existing system process performance and operations that related to end customer or even internal customer could be rated in scientific approach. Further, the survey perceives EPC-NFV strategy prioritizing from management perspective, and expected added value to the operator, in addition to define technologies that might depend on vEPC. 3.3.2 Model Rating Matrix 2 A matrix rating model was prepared according to reputable references of different use cases and studies. The matrix support the mobile operators to rate the available NFV models according to defined KPIs. 2 Refer to Appendix B. Rate used scale (4 full achieve, 3 fair achieve, 2 weak achieve, never achieve). http://context.reverso.net/translation/english-arabic/issues+put+forward+for+discussion http://context.reverso.net/translation/english-arabic/issues+put+forward+for+discussion 82 A qualitative method used to rate most of the general KPIs that are same for all mobile operators regardless of their aspects. While the cost KPIs rated using a quantitative method, since the cost KPIs are vary from one operator to another based on different drivers such as mobile operator size (subscriber number), operator‟s vendor cost and other elements. The cost rating model was developed based on two main sheets “Cost input Sheet”, and “Cost index sheet”, in addition to a cost summary sheet that present the models cost rate. 3.3.3 Cost Input 3 The cost inputs are varies from operator to another depending on many factors, common factors clarified in the cost input sheet, however the model flexible enough for any operator with additional cost elements that can be added in the input sheet in order to be addressed in the business cost modeling and calculation. 3.3.4 Cost Index 4 It is an driver sheet that gets the input from cost input sheet to estimate the total cost for each scenario, so the rate of cost KPI will depend on results of index sheet, as it represents business case for vEPC transformation scenarios. 3 Refer to Appendix C 4 Refer to Appendix D 83 3.3.5 Cost Summary A normalization sheet for the result of driver sheet that presents the output of cost model and the rate for each scenario. 3.3.6 Weighting Matrix 5 The matrix is to prioritize defined KPIs according to the business strategy, technical approach and transformation trigger views. The mentioned perspectives should be taken into account to weight KPIs in an objective and appropriate way. The decision for weighting will differ from operator to another relaying on variation in decision power distribution between mentioned perspectives. Which is recommended to be set by selected committee from the mobile operator management (business and technology) to take the most suitable and validated decision. 5 Refer to Appendix E weight used scale as a range (5= (80-100) %, 4= (60-79) %, 3= (40-59) %, 2= (20-39) %, and 1= (0-19) %). 84 Chapter Four Case Study 4.1 Introduction According to Wataniya Mobile (2016), Ooredoo Palestine a member of Ooredoo Group, Ooredoo Palestine is the second mobile telecom company to have been licensed in Palestine, and whose network currently covers 96.5% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Ooredoo Palestine aims to bring the latest mobile technologies and highest quality service to both individual and commercial customers in Palestine”. Ooredoo Palestine started commercial GSM services in West Bank by 2009 and in Gaza by 2017, Palestinian telecom market suffers from occupations‟ obstacles that prevent operators from introducing new technologies to customers. As third generation services (3G) were launched in 2018 only in West Bank region after obtaining the required permissions and approval from Israeli Authority to allocate and use 3G Spectrum for both Palestinian mobile operators, in addition to get approvals to deliver and enter the 3G network elements to the country, where it was prevented by Israeli side to use the 3G spectrum by any of Palestinian operators, and even it was not allowed to deliver any of 3G network elements. In addition to Israeli limitation on entering equipment related to existing network by the complex procedures that waste resources, mainly time and money. This issue has impacts on different perspective for Palestinian 85 operators mainly on revenue, beside other effects on customers‟ dissatisfaction due to delay in introducing new services, thus Israeli managed its‟ restrictions in a way contributes in customer guidance to use existing Israeli operators service, accordingly this created the illegal competition whose perform one of the most dangerous threats on Palestinian operators. Ooredoo Palestine struggles in risky market with illegal competition from Israeli operators, they have to be ready to unexpected and urgent events such as increment in number of subscribers, market campaigns which needs core changes and new business trends and move from technology to another smoother as much as they can. 4.2 Ooredoo Palestine IP network Ooredoo Palestine core network was designed to handle 3G traffic, however this will be different in next generations as existing network will not be sufficient to handle the huge traffic in next generations with required quality. For IP core network, the existing elements in Ooredoo Palestine Network are MGW, HLR, GGSN, and SGSN. Media Gateway (MGW) According to Cisco (2002), MGW is a converter for media streams between different telecommunications technologies such as 2G, 2.5G and 3G. 86 Home Location Register (HLR) Based on Cisco (2002), HLR Contains the data related to users such as location and authorization, for HSS, it is a modernized HLR with Authentication center. Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) As mentioned in Cisco (2002), SGSN is an element of the GPRS network that handles all packet switched data within the internal network. Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) GGSN is an element of the GPRS network. Referencing to Cisco (2002), it is responsible for the interworking between the GPRS internal network and external packet switched networks. 4.3 Core Network Ooredoo Palestine SWOT Matrix SOWT analysis used to discover the most needed strategy for Ooredoo Palestine from lists of company‟s strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. 4.3.1 SOWT Analysis This part aims to clarify the company strengths and weakness, and clarify the Opportunities and threats in order to Plan for more powerful strategies that could benefit from company strengths and opportunities to get rid of existing company weakness, increase company strength points, and limit threats impacts. http://www.telecomabc.com/g/gprs.html http://www.telecomabc.com/p/packet-switching.html 87 Strengths Ooredoo Palestine is a part of Ooredoo international group that enriches Ooredoo Palestine trademark, especially in vendor management. Also Ooredoo Palestine Network is modernized network comparing with local competitor, thus Ooredoo Palestine GSM and third generation networks provide services with quality on both voice and data services. In addition Ooredoo Palestine Network has competitive capacity to handle customers demand with high quality in third generation network. Moreover network team skills robustness one of the most essential strength point for Ooredoo Palestine. Weaknesses Ooredoo Palestine is the second operator in Palestine (West Bank, Gaza) as mentioned it started its GSM commercial services by 2009 in West Bank after 11 years of local Competitor monopolism for West Bank market, Moreover Ooredoo Palestine started its GSM commercial services in Gaza by 2017 after 19 years of monopolism from local competitor so it is expected that number of customers related to Ooredoo Palestine is less than local competitor. In General telecom operators around world suffers from decrement in EPIDTA and OpEx increment. However Palestinian operators are special case as Israeli restrictions and limitations contributed clearly in EPITDA decrement and OpEx increment more and more. 88 Opportunities Ooredoo Palestine aims to be first choice for customers through providing new services with optimum leading time and highest quality.in addition, once Israeli allow Palestinian operators to provide any new technologies services , Ooredoo Palestine seeks to introducing them with shortest implement time. Threats The political situation for Palestine is reflected on all existing fields such as telecom industry which suffers from Israeli restrictions on applying new technologies and equipment‟ entering to Palestine. Moreover, the illegal competition from Israeli operators that provide advanced technologies which are blocked to be introduced by Palestinian Operators until an unspecified time, all this existing limitations affect vendors availability in Palestinian Market . Also worldwide OpEx increment and revenue decrements for telecom operators, in addition to high investment is needed for new technologies. 4.3.2 SOWT Aanalysis Strategies The result of SOWT analysis are the strategies that come from matching (strengths ,Opportunities) ,(strengths, threats),(weaknesses ,opportunities)and (weaknesses, threats) with that company should follow to enrich Ooredoo Palestine by improve its strengths and limits its weakness ,the key points of strategies is mentioned in 45 Table 2 SOWT Matrix – Template for Network Wataniya Mobile, virtualization strategy is a main strategy resulted from SWOT analysis. Virtualization is a key strategy for Ooredoo Palestine to reduce the impact of mentioned threats. So Ooredoo Palestine aims to turn its‟ IP legacy network to IP virtualized network. This study case focus on selecting the best business model based on Ooredoo Palestine vision. The excel model will be used as an structured interview with Ooredoo Palestine IP core Manger, network project Manager and CTO to determine the readiness and most suitable model that fits Ooredoo Palestine current and future needs taking in to consideration its readiness. 46 Table 2. Control difference between NFV models. Internal External Strengths (S) Weaknesses (W) S1: Modernized core network. W1: Low EBITDA S2: Improved network team skills. W2: Number of customer is less than local competitor due to their monopoly in the market for so long time. S3: Core network has the capacity due to suitable network planning to handle customers demand with high quality. W3: High OpEx S4: Ooredoo Palestine is a part of international group (Ooredoo group) Opportunities (O) SO Strategies Use of internal strengths (S) to take advantage external opportunities (O). WO Strategies Use of external opportunities (O) to overcome internal weaknesses (W). O1: Be the first choice for customers. S4O1: Use the Brand Power to attract customers. O1W2: Customer‟s acquisition strategy O2: Provide new services with optimum leading time and highest quality. O1W3: Digitization Strategy O3: Implement new technologies with optimized time. O2O3W2: Virtualization Strategy. Threats (T) ST Strategies Use of internal strengths (S) to avoid or reduce external threats (T). WT Strategies Strategies to minimize internal weaknesses (W) and possibly reduce external threats (T). T1: Israeli restrictions on applying new technologies. S2T2T6: Virtualization Strategy. T2: Israeli restrictions on equipment' entering to Palestine. S2T6: Training strategy (invest in the employees). 47 T3: Increment in OpEx and decrements in Revenue in Telecom industry. S4T3T5: Using group Purchase Power. T4: Illegal Competition from Israeli Operators. T5: High investments are required for every new technologies. T6: Limitation in Vendor due to existing restrictions. 48 Chapter Five EPC Models 5.1 Introduction Based on ETSI (2013), the NFV has a lot of service and business models, this study considers five models that have different use cases on the mobile operator‟s networks: NFVIaaS, VNPaaS, VNSaaS, fully Owned NFV and legacy system. Figure 11 illustrates the main service control difference between NFV models, as it is clear more control on service require more capital investment from mobile operators, more operation efforts, and less of services offered by virtualized network functions service providers. Figure 11. Control difference between NFV models. Meanwhile the business model is the structure that assists the sustainability of a business, including its vision and mission to achieve its goals and ongoing plans. They are looking into operator infrastructure and service 49 offering development and reducing some impact also for the vendor ecosystem. The service model represent the business model if the model chosen to be cloud model (IaaS,PaaS,SaaS).Mean while owned legacy and owned NFV are owned model for the operates. As service model is refer to any IT services that are provisioned and gotten into from a cloud computing vendor. This term includes all delivery and service models of cloud computing. Cloud services are delivered over the internet. The choice of service model or owned models for virtualization impacts operators business models in different ways, as Network virtualization offers a great business potential, in terms of cost savings and additional revenue sources for operators and innovation opportunities. 5.2 Network Function Virtualized Infrastructure as a Service (NFVIaaS) As mentioned in ETSI (2013), Network Function Virtualized Infrastructure as a Service (NFVIaaS) is a model that offers to customers/operators suite of infrastructure services including processing, storage and fundamental computing resources same to cloud IaaS along with dynamic network connectivity services as Network as a Service (NaaS). Or it could be offered from department to another in the same mobile operator organization. However, the main drivers for mobile operator to select NFVIaaS model for their specific use cases are usually related to performance objectives (e.g. latency, reliability), regulatory requirements, or cost optimization. 50 In the common practices for NFVIaaS, an NFVI/cloud infrastructure service providers offer NFV infrastructure set of resources (computing, hypervisor, storage, network capacity, network termination, dynamic network connectivity etc.) to another service provider (e.g. Mobile Operator) according to commercial service agreement between both parties including specific SLA. Mobile operators shall be able to run, deploy and integrate its VNF function/application on the provided NFV Infrastructure for NFVI service provider. The core target of NFVI is to provide proper virtualized implementation environment to run different functions and applications. To achieve this, smooth operational life cycle shall be supported by NFVIaaS to offer appropriate infrastructure services for different functions and different mobile operators in the same infrastructure. Moreover, the service supply chain in the NFVIaaS has to be through constructive administration framework to manage across administrative boundaries between different functions or mobile operators. The mobile operators usually pick the NFVIaaS service provider based on commercial agreement terms such as NFVI availability, capacity constraints and other infrastructure limitations for service horizontal scale and vertical scales, and service SLA, and accordingly all of these are reflected on commercial prices. Therefore, mobile operator has to pay more attention on the commercial terms that support its business objectives. 51 NFVI can be a solution for Mobile operator to improve service resiliency by running the service on different distinct and independent NFV infrastructures. Thus, if failures occur on one NFV Infrastructure will be independent on the other running NFV infrastructure. Such redundant setup will provide mobile operator a higher resiliency service than it could rely on one NFV Infrastructure. However, this setup requires proper mechanisms to manage failure recoveries across validated independent NFV Infrastructures with different administrative domains. Further, Mobile operators use NFVIaaS Model for different applications to reduce latency by deploying NFV closer to end user service network, one of these application is content delivery network CDN by deploying the CDN network close to end user service network and do content caching which leads to reduce latency and cost. Another application is specific EPC functions that can be deployed closer to RAN in order to reduce latency, and improve service throughput from end user prospective. However, this require proper mechanisms to monitor and predict latency in each functions particular deployments or planned deployments. Moreover, regulations might influence the NFVI deployments negatively or positively. Mobile operators in each country have set of regulations polices must to comply with, such as geographic constraints of the end user information storage location and processing environment locations. Mobile operators have to choose NFVI service provider based on its infrastructure environment geographic location. Other policies might introduce new NFVI deployments or commercial agreements to enrich economic cycle, 52 such as introducing authorized national NFVIaaS service provider to run and host different functions for different operators for appropriate investment management by having one shared infrastructure for different operators, which lead to reduce end user service cost and support environment policies. The NFVIaaS model has a lot of concerns and aspects that need more attention from mobile operators and service providers. NFVIaaS has security concerns as mobile operator doesn‟t control the infrastructure layer neither control the infrastructure access that managed by NFVI service provider. NFVIaaS has operational complexities related to infrastructure administration, monitoring, and infrastructure resources allocation. And this require well orchestration management of VNF instances along with proper authentication and authorization mechanism to allow VNF instances execution on NFV infrastructure for authorized ones only as well as manage physical access to infrastructure environment. Other concerns are to have proper SLA measurement mechanism between mobile operator and service provider, and to have efficient reporting tool for failure notification and diagnostics management that keep mobile operators informed about NFVI performance to avoid any impact on the end user services. Other Models provide service beyond the infrastructure such as VNSaaS and VNPaaS. 53 5.3 Vitalized Network Software as a Service (VNSaaS) As ETSI (2013), clarifies that Vitalized Network Software as a Service, (VNSaaS) provides Customers the ability to use SW applications, the consumer can manage application only from configuration prospective, and can‟t control the underlying Infrastructure nor manage the Virtualized Network Functions VNFs. While, The VNFaaS that used by mobile operators is using the concepts of VNSaaS, the mobile operators doesn‟t need to invest in infrastructure or network functions applications as they can purchase these functions as service from the service provider in OpEx basis whenever its needed. The VNFaaS use the following SaaS model advantages in VNSaaS model:  Modernized software and tools that ensure service with high availability  software licenses efficient utilization and proper management  Data and Management are centralized  Minimize initial investment The development in the VNFaaS and VNSaaS is leaded to introduce a lot of use case that use this software model, where the mobile operator purchase function or software as service from specialized services providers in their domains. An examples of the deployments for this models in Mobile operator‟s networks are: CPEs (customer premises equipment), network firewalls, DPI (Data Packet inspection within PS 54 core), IPS (intrusion prevention system), and network performance monitoring ….etc. This model can be used by Mobile operator from different prospective rather than get functions from service providers a service, to provide services to their B2B customers beyond legacy access services. The Mobile operator can deploy VNSaaS within its network to provide customers routing, security, and network connectivity functions as a service. As using the VNF concepts enable mobile operators to manage their resources effectively using resource sharing to generate revenue from their B2B customer and in same reduce setup and operational management costs. 5.4 Vitalized Network Platform as a Service (VNPaaS) ETSI (2013), Continue to clarify that Vitalized Network Platform as a Service (VNPaaS) is suite of infrastructure and application as a platform, mobile operators can deploy network applications and develop their network service customized to their business purposes using the provided platform. As VNSaaS and NFVIaaS the same can be achieved using the VNPaaS model, as Mobile operator can offer the available resources of infrastructure and software/applications as a platform for their B2B customers to run and deploy their network functions with flexibility to customize network service to fit to their business needs, examples on these functions are APN, Wi-Fi, and VPN. 55 Further, the VNPaaS and VNSaaS have a lot shared features and benefits, but VNPaaS have more flexibility and scalability that allows mobile operators as customer to do more application development, deployment and scale vertically as far as level of customization provided by platform. The VNPaaS provides mobile operators as customer more control on the application and data layers and allows customers to create their own VNFs. VNPaaS provides a platform with all customization tools and dynamic network functions needed for application/functions development, deployment, and service administration in proper scalable structure that supports managing and processing huge data and large numbers of customers within virtual functions network. There is a lot of VNPaaS model use cases within mobile networks such as: Firewall functions, and IMS (IP multimedia sub systems) networks. However, both VNSaaS and VNPaaS have issues that must be addressed in any network deployment. VNSaaS main issues is the single-point of failure as VNF may not functioning properly due to any network connectivity issues or due to software bug. This challenging the provided functions as service quality level comparing to legacy networks where the mobile operator has full hands on control. Thus, it is required to have full service measurement and monitoring in the VNSaaS deployments provided by service provider to Mobile operators to minimize the quality impacts on network function services. In addition to isolate between mobile operators and customers functions in VNSaaS to minimize the security threats on 56 customers data and configuration files, as well as to avoid any quality impacts from customer misuse on other customers within the same service provider virtual network. The same for VNPaaS, as service provide have to secure authorized user access control to API calls, load and resource mechanisms that separates function‟s workload from different mobile operators, and to provide a solid monitoring and measurement tools that control resources and manage utilization of infrastructure and Platform capacities in a way that doesn‟t impact customer services. And from security prospective, service provider has to deploy high service isolation and protections to prevent any management domain break out for any provided service within service provider virtualized network The mobile operators are occupied with telecom vendor‟s special dedicated hardware that perform different functions within legacy mobile network. The mobile operators aims to swap their legacy vendor hardware to standard hardware. Thus, Mobile operators started deploying their own virtualized infrastructure to host and run special applications and functions far away from legacy networks. This model it could be could as owned NFV, where the mobile operator own all layers from infrastructure till the application with full control on the virtualized network functions VNFs and the service. Mobile Operators tend to this model to reduce investment in costly vendor hardware which mean lower CapEx, as well as reduce the operation expenses OpEx, and in same time to reduce the operation complexities of managing legacy network that requires certain level of 57 vendor hardware operation skills. Further, this model keep mobile operator services independent from any other service provider‟s issues and as well as their customers issues as it is the case in the NFVIaaS, VNSaaS, and VNPaaS but this has to be compromised with potential saving that might be achieved by deploying these NFV model instead of deploy the owned NFV model. 5.5 Owned NFV ETSI (2013), Mentioned that owned NFV model which classified under on primes deployment model has quality advantages among other NFV models due to full control on all layers. In such environment the mobile operator has high flexibility to manage virtualized network resources between different network functions by allocating resources dynamically based on need and service demand to improve quality proactively. Therefore, in case one of the mobile network services (e.g. voice) had high demand which increase significantly due to particular market situation (e.g. natural disaster scenario; Earthquake that leads to massive demand on voice services), the virtualized network could support mobile operators to allocate the needed resources for this function or service to handle the abnormal demand in such situation, far away from applying control solutions of call restrictions that leads to customer dissatisfaction and revenue loss. Further, owned NFV support mobile operator to optimize CapEx and OpEx, along with improve quality of service by utilize network resource 58 properly, increase service availability and resiliency with dynamic network functions, enhance network scalability by dynamic network functions capacity modifications according to load, dynamic topology reconfiguration for performance optimization, and provide vital environment for service innovation and creativity that removes vendor hardware limitations with dynamic allocated resources. The main use cases of owned NFV in mobile operators are virtualized core network functions (e.g. virtualized PCRF, virtualized Evolved packet core vEPC, virtualized IMS …etc.).Figure 12 shows one of possible deployment of EPC virtualization based on NFV. Figure 12. EPC virtualization based on NFV. One of the main advantage of deploying Virtualized Network Functions EPC that each function can be scaled independently based on demand and performance requirement, in such virtualized deployment for EPC it could be increase the resources for specific function or service without affecting 59 the others, e.g. increase resources for user plane without any change or impacts on control plane. However, in virtualized EPC achieving service continuity, availability, and resiliency requires proper dynamic relocation of VNFs for the managed sessions and connections to overcome any virtual machines (VM‟s) failure or overload. Furthermore, in deploying the virtualized core network functions such as EPC, it should take in consideration the existing non-virtualized network functions to have seamless services flow, and seamless network control and management plane flow, regardless coexistence of virtualized and non- virtualized environment. To have proper monitoring mechanisms, fault management, and recovery solutions to manage all virtualized network functions effectively as same as the non-virtualized elements. Also mobile operators have to consider the traffic data, traffic, and management separation logic for virtualized and non- virtualized core network function. 5.6 Owned Legacy System The owned legacy model as NFV owned is on primes deployment model has advantage among other NFV models due to full control on all layers, which can be considered as the main differentiator for owned NFV and legacy system model. However such environment the mobile operator has rigid network resources, so different network functions requires different 60 resources according to the function nature. Therefore, high demand on network services requires more resources investment, so any abnormal demand shall be consider as a risk, which leads to customer dissatisfaction and revenue loss. Further, owned legacy system requires high CapEx and OpEx, in addition to service availability and resiliency limitations. 61 Chapter Six Targeted KPIs 6.1 Cost One of the most important Key Performance Indicators in project management in addition to its importance for management to choose its strategies and plan that address their goal. Based on Mijumbi et al. (2015), virtualization as a technology improved its efficiency in reducing cost whether it is CapEx or OpEx. In our study we focused on EPC system in network as it is the core of network. However different implementation models have different cost reduction impact that affected by different internal and external factors such as but not limited to company scope, size, beside country polices and political situation. Telecom industry trend moving toward cutting cost as it is one of the most costly existing industry which is consistent with virtualization. The selection for the model will be according to company‟s scopes as some classified to be CapEx ordinated other are OpEx ordinated or they tends to one of the classification and sometimes both For CapEx oriented operators, they will try to reduce OpEx as much as possible, so the implementation model that will be choose will have the minimal OpEx , on the counterpart of OpEx oriented companies who will try to choose the model with minimal CapEx 62 Other operators that can‟t be classified under these two main categories, the management decide the required weight for both of expenditures CapEx and OpEx. 6.2 Quality According to De Gouveia and Magedanz, (2009), in telecommunication industry, the Quality of Service is as a group contains certain level of service requirements offered by service provider‟s network to its end users, and without achieving this level of requirements the end user will not get the proper benefits of offered service or might lose some of its functionality. Therefore, a specific performance parameters are used to as indicators to measure Quality of Service provided to end user in the network such as latency, jitter, delay, service availability, packet loss…etc. For Mobile operators the Quality of Service plays important role in the business market as differentiators from service to service and market to market, as it touches customer experience. So it could be the first driver for customer to select the service and provider even if the prices are higher comparing with other existing providers. In the mobile Data services, thus the mobile operators pay more investment and efforts to maintain or improve quality of service to have the best competitive position in the market. However, based on Bo et al. (2015), introducing NFV by mobile operators requires them to consider its impact on the quality of service, by maintaining acceptable level of quality of service or improve it. In high 63 level the NFV has a lot of use cases that support improving the quality of service, one of most important use cases is deploying geo redundancy with low cost and less complexity that leads to improve service availability even at crises with optimal deployment. NFV deployment enhances the quality of service and customer experience by introducing sharing resources between different services or applications which means the higher service demand will get capacity from low demand service resources in dynamic service quality management approach that leads to serve customer with better quality in terms of latency and delay. As Papidas (2016), mentioned that Deploying NFV in packet core/EPC has major impacts on the quality of service that vary from model to model, but in general virtualization environment leads to enhance capacity comparing with legacy EPC that is limited to special vendor HW capacity, accordingly this will lead to improve throughput from packet core side beside improving service availability and latency by combining different packet core functions. In addition vEPC/NFV provides rapid recovery time which improve significantly mean time to repair that enhance service availability. 6.3 Time to Market, Value Proposition, and Complexity: In addition to quality, time to market, value proposition and operation complexities are other important factors have to be considered in any NFV deployment model. Nowadays, time to market is a differentiator factor for mobile operators to lead the market or to act quickly for new technology trends and business needs, which is strongly linked to value proposition, as 64 efficient time to market model will support the mobile operators to introduce new innovative services with optimized time. Therefore, the model complexities are considered to allow for this advantage, the model with less deployment complexities minimizes the time needed to launch new service. Thus, FN Division Telecommunication engineering centre, clarified that mobile operators rely on NFV to gain rapid development and deployment for new innovative services with more agile network that has less operation complexities that allows them to scale up and increase capacity seamless at any needed time. While at legacy network usually any expansion requires new special vendor hardware, in addition to logistic time, installation time, and configuration time, which can‟t work efficiently in rapid demand or service innovation. NFV enhances the position of software entrants, small players and academia to benefit from the virtual appliance market, inspiring more service innovation to create new services and new revenue sources rapidly with lower risk. Mobile Operators have already started introducing the NFV and SDN solutions on their networks to reduce the operational complexities and enhance the Time to Market by deploying fully integrated virtualized functions such as vEPC for packet core functions, which will open the door for new services innovation with more value proposition by inspiring openness and enabling a wide domains of eco-systems. 65 In general the deployed vEPC in mobile operators provides automated service workflow, automated network service chain, and end to end service deployment coordination through network function orchestration, which leads to minimize the service management complexities compared with legacy EPC. vEPC supports mobile operators to abstract underlying hardware, and allow services automation scalability and elasticity. It enriches service provisioning flexibility and reduces the time needed to deploy and integrate new services The NFV met business needs to improve time to market by applying the following:  Reducing the service maturation cycle.  Allow to perform the production and test on the same infrastructure that provides much smooth and time efficient test, integration, and production migration.  Remote software service provisioning for rapid services scaled up/down as required, and quick service deployment. 6.4 Security Mobile security is one of the most important issue that operators and customers care about, it is can‟t be a black and white; in addition it is impossible to get rid of threats, the challenge will be exist as the functions run, So the operator mission is to reduce the risk as much as possible it is not simply a case of protected or at risk. The probability of new complex 66 issues to be appeared increasing day after day, the security experts will not be glad when they find solution for specific s