rt can be appropriately reduced. Essentially, virtualization isolates the test environment from hardware obsolescence. By using virtualization, orchestration, and SDN control on a common cloud platform, virtual compute resources or VMs can be spun-up as needed, and virtual storage allocated instantaneously to create a laboratory environment. The service testing effort can be viewed and validated in layers, where each layer builds on the layer(s) below. Functionality is validated in layers and functions already validated in lower layers are reused for new services. This is pictorially represented in Figure 14.9. Key Paradigm Shift Vendor Proprietary Hardware and ~50% reduction in overall Network significant testing effort certifying new Element (NE/NF) testing effort by running HW platform every few years Vendor Software on Virtualized CCP 6-9 month lab build intervals for new NEs Instantaneous use of test VMs/Compute resources in CCP to instantiate Lab env. Multiple, Expensive, Dedicated Test Shared, Reusable, multi-tenant Test Environments Infrastructure with ability to Elasticity scale up/down VMs as needed Accelerated Field Deployments Pivoting Long production testing intervals Test VMs/VNFs in Production Long production deployment intervals Rapid, Automated Software deployments especially for networks with lots of NEs using Orchestration Use of Agile Principles in testing to Long Lab testing cycles Accelerate Testing and TTM FIGURE 14.8 Paradigm shifts in testing. Building the Network of the Future Service instances Common Cloud Platform FIGURE 14.9 Testing vision (2020). Certification testing of all virtual functions is accomplished on an existing production cloud infrastructure. First, testing is performed on common capabilities that are provided by a catalog of network functions. Once the individual VNFs have been validated, they do not need to be revali- dated for use in new service offerings and the testing effort shifts to validating groupings of VNFs that make up a service. Full testing and certificati