SCTE24: DriveNets sees real potential in helping cable virtualize the core

Hey, I’m Jeff Baumgartner with LightReading. We’re here in Atlanta at the SCTE Tech Expo 2024, and I’m joined by. Hello, with DriveNets. So great to see you.
Good to see you, too.
Thanks for spending some time with me here.
Thank you very much.

So we had, there’s a lot of different news happening at the show, but there was some big news, I thought, involving your company and Comcast, wherever, you know, they’ve been virtualizing the access network, but now they’re talking about virtualizing the core network. So talk a little bit about your role in all of that because the announcement came out and there’s some other partners involved, but love to get a better sense for what you guys are going to be doing.

Yeah, of course. We are very excited about it. And the mission of driving it is actually to take those existing complex networks and turn them into something that it’s more like the cloud networks. It’s virtualized, it’s automated, programmable, and then it’s changed the cost structure of our customers and cable and service provider. And in this way, they can serve better their customers. So this is our mission, and we are so excited that Comcast is leveraging our capabilities and implementing in their journey, moving into virtualization and new networks and automated networks.
Okay.
Yeah.

And Comcast has branded it as Janus, what they’re doing. So in terms of what you’re implementing, and it’s just here in the Atlanta area, I think is where the first implementation is. So how is that different than the traditional way of operating the core network? You talk about automation. So is there a little automation and a lot more hardware and less virtualization? What’s the legacy picture look like?

So there are several ingredients into it. It started from white boxes and virtualization on top of it. And then you have our software that actually do all the routing capabilities and on top of it, because it’s a software base, so you can automate it and pre provision it. So this is the building blocks. The building blocks is the white box that, of course, we are not dealing with white boxes. We are just the software company. But we do this virtualization and we give our customers the capability to run this network, which is very, very efficient. Think about it, that there is the same boxes everywhere. So logistics wise, for example. But there are many attributes on those, how you leverage those technologies. Okay. And then it’s fully automated. And yes, we started here. I mean, this was Comcast choice to do it first in Atlanta. And we are very proud and happy about it. But this is a journey that will allow them to really rebuild their network and this associate with a lot of savings and new services that they can bring to their customers.

Okay. Now, historically, how have you been working with the cable operators? Because the big announcement this week with Comcast really laid it out for that particular deployment, what they’re doing. So what about other operators? Are you doing something similar with them, trying to virtualize the core network or are there other areas where you can work with them?

Yeah, so we are very focused on the service provider and the cable operators, tier one. So we can really do the journey with them because this is not only virtualization, it’s all the concept, how you redesign, build and operate the network. So it’s a journey that our mission is driving. It is to help them go through this journey. Usually it starts from a small implementation to get used to the net, to the technology, to us as a vendor, to the capabilities, and then you grow from there. So we are doing it with the service provider and with the cable industry because they have a lot to gain from it. The hyperscale and the cloud people did it, I don’t know, 20 years ago. So now they are catching up, but very smart way because it’s proven that it’s working in other places. So you can have this direction, adapt it to their needs and leverage it. So I think they are in the right path to be very successful in building those networks.

Right. You described it as a journey for the cable operators. So would you characterize their journey at the beginning of the journey or kind of where are they along that path? Knowing every operator is a little bit different.

Yeah. So it’s various. There are early adopters, people that started with us five years ago, like Comcast or at and T and others. And there are people that were waiting for this technology to be mature enough and gain from other people being the early adopters. But by all means, I would say the train left the station in the sense that everybody understands that they will need to redesign and rebuild their new network, decommission the old one, because the new network should be software based, fully automated, programmable, and this is the only way they can change their cost structure. This is the only way they can be time to market first, time to market with new services. This is the only way for them to do, you know, no maintenance window to upgrade the network as the hyperscale. You use them and every day they upgrade. They don’t call you. They say, I’m about to upgrade.
Amazon’s going to be out from two to four.

Yeah. It’s not the case. So they are adopting those models. They need to do this technology transformation, which we are there to serve them, help them to do that.
All right. Well, hello. It’s great to get a chance to catch up with you, learn a little bit more about drivenets and how you’re working with the cable industry. So I hope you have a good rest of the show.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.