SDxCentral’s latest report entitled “2018 NFV Report Series Part 1: NFV Infrastructure and VIM” covers the infrastructure layer of the network functions virtualization (NFV) stack.

As part of the report, the research team at SDxCentral conducted its third annual survey of relevant stakeholders. And one interesting change from the previous two years was a notable drop in end-user respondents who said they were “interested and actively researching and considering deployment of NFV.” This year, only 6 percent said they were researching, which is down from last year, when 41 percent of participants indicated they were in the consideration phase of NFV.

These results were based on 85 respondents who participated in the survey, which was conducted in March 2018.

Some of the drop in the research phase can be explained by the uptick in customers moving to the testing and deployment phases. However, the rest of the drop might be that those who were considering NFV solutions last year, are no longer planning to deploy them anytime soon.

Eighteen percent of this year’s respondents said they “don’t plan to deploy within the next year,” compared to last year when only 6 percent said they had determined NFV wasn’t going to work for them, and 3 percent saw no appeal in NFV technologies.

What’s hindering the adoption of NFV technologies? Sixty-four percent of respondents indicated it was a “lack of training and in-house talent” that was stopping the deployment of NFV technologies. While  47 percent cited “too much confusion,” and 38 percent cited “platform immaturity.”

The report also looked at the uptake of containers versus virtual machines.

The research found that service providers and technology vendors were split on whether containers or virtual machines (VMs) will be the infrastructure for delivering NFV applications in the future. But 47 percent of respondents felt that containers will probably supplant VMs, over time. Thirty-four percent said “containers will coexist with VMs with no clear dominant choice.” Only 15 percent thought that “containers were starting to replace VMs now and will become the default in the next 18 months.” Four percent said “VMs will remain the default for NFV.”