The telecommunications industry has long been on the cutting edge of serious computing power. Lurking behind the scenes of any telco operation there exists literally tons of often esoteric and usually high-end hardware – all of it custom and extremely expensive and none of it easily replaceable. To this day, offering new network features or adding such things as management functionality or custom end-user services (such as the ability to monitor subscribers and send them targeted data) will typically require wholesale replacement of custom or customized hardware, which costs telcos tens and hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Finally, this now antiquated way to build out networking infrastructure is about to be eclipsed. How? Through the introduction of telco network virtualization, where software rather than hardware becomes the means to introduce new capabilities or to update existing features and functionality, of course. Hence, telcos are now moving into a new world of highly cost efficient operations.

Virtualization has now been around for over a decade. VMware, Citrix and other software vendors have long allowed enterprises to leverage standard servers and other hardware to add new capabilities and features at a fraction of the cost of doing business the way the telcos have to date. Think, for example, of the ability to run Windows and Microsoft (News - Alert) Office software on an OS-X Mac as the easiest way to describe it.

Today, the emergence of IP-based communications and a new and very serious push within the telecom industry to develop myriad network standards are beginning to create the necessary global ecosystems to move the telcos into virtualized environments. In a nutshell, this means that the telcos can begin to build and deploy software on inexpensive and standardized hardware to deliver all sorts of advanced capabilities and features.

As network hardware is pushed aside by software, the inevitable benefits of virtualization will begin to accrue. The carriers will begin to realize huge cost savings – both from no longer needed specialized hardware, but also from greatly reduced deployment costs. Replacing hardware is not only expensive in terms of buying the equipment, but is also costly due to the extensive field world necessary to deploy it. As hardware costs disappear, network virtualization will also begin to level the playing field for the smaller carriers who are always strapped for cash – deploying new services as software reduces costs enough to allow the second and third tier carriers to match what the tier one carriers can do. Ultimately the key beneficiaries are the subscribers that are necessarily serviced by the tier two and three carriers. Software-driven communications networks offer a major strategic step forward for the entire industry.

All of that said there will still be a significant learning curve the telcos need to go through up front in order to best take advantage of the new capabilities that will soon be at their disposal. Overcoming the learning curve is in fact the real next challenge. Virtualization will ease a great deal of pain, but mastering the software capabilities, understanding the emerging “software” technologies, and learning to properly deploy software-based services requires a new set of skills.

According to Senior Editor Peter Bernstein, “It is an inevitable trend that the service delivery model will transform to a data center-centric model. “

Telcos need to take advantage of every opportunity to develop these skills. It becomes highly advisable for them to participate in such events as the Software Telco Congress, which delivers an exclusive end to end program to meet the needs of the telco community to get quickly up to speed on every aspect of delivering telco network virtualization and software-driven telco services.