Upping the Ante – Why We’re Bringing NFV-Acceleration to Media Server

Earlier this week, Radisys announced that we’ve made significant enhancements to our already industry-leading Media Server Media Resource Function (MRF) with the addition of NFV-Acceleration. I’m excited about the new opportunities that this offering brings to our service provider customers as they embrace the cloud to deliver communications services without sacrificing performance.

In a virtualized/cloud environment, computing resources are not unlimited. The addition of hardware acceleration technology allows Media Server to take advantage of additional processing resources in off-the-shelf servers and open hardware such as OCP-based platforms. We’re now able to support both public and private cloud environments, while tapping into all available hardware resources, including DSPs and GPUs, to deliver the best price/performance model for delivering media services. Our enhanced vMRF can now improve RoI for cloud communications services, while reducing the datacenter footprint bringing CapEx and OpEx savings. 

Here are just a few areas where NFV-acceleration technology is a big deal:

• EVS Transcoding. Service providers are turning to the Enhanced Voice Services codec to already to lower their network costs by increasing subscriber volume on existing spectrum. We can support service providers’ return on investment in EVS transcoding by delivering up to 30% greater capacity for the codec. No other media processing solution can come close.
• GPU Support. Not only does the enhanced Media Server offering encompass our cloud-ready DSP sled and COTS-based DSP acceleration options which can quantify RoI compared to software-only solutions, it also offers a roadmap to GPU support. Coupling our GPU trajectory with software-only performance provides an attractive option for low to mid-scale deployments. 
• PCI Express® Expansion Options. The Media Server architecture can take advantage of additional compute resources on off-the-shelf server configurations – or through PCIe expansion – while still operating as a Virtual Network Function (VNF) while retaining full cloud management features and workload elasticity.

Our combination of NFV experience and our scale advantage enables us to help customers with their RoI analysis for their virtualized media processing and transcoding needs. I’m confident that Media Server with NFV-Acceleration gives our customers the best price/performance in the industry for delivering media services that drive revenue, while helping them realize the OpEx savings associated with NFV and the CapEx savings of hardware acceleration.

Scalable media processing with NFV is tough. Radisys is upping the ante and embracing standards-based HW Acceleration architectures for NFV infrastructure, so we can continue to support our customers’ efforts to virtualize their networks – even for their toughest media processing requirements.

Learn more about this latest release of Media Server here, or contact me at al.balasco@radisys.com to discuss how Radisys can help meet your specific objectives. 

About the Author

Al Balasco is the Head of Media, Core and Applications Business. Prior to his current role, he was the Sr. Director of Product Management for the Media Server business. Before joining Radisys in October 2010, Al was the Director of Product Management in Avaya Inc.’s Unified Communications business unit where he was responsible for the delivery of a variety of collaboration solutions and partnerships. Prior to Avaya, Mr. Balasco was the Vice President of Product Management at Spectel and was instrumental in defining the company’s VOIP conferencing and collaboration strategy. He also served as Director of Marketing for Sonexis Inc. and Director of Product Management at Brooktrout Software. Mr. Balasco has over 25 years of product management, business development and marketing experience in the telecommunications industry and has an MBA from Northeastern University in Boston.