Amdocs to work with telecom operators and cloud developers looking to integrate the AT&T ECOMP platform
AT&T signed a deal with Amdocs to be the integrator for telecommunications companies and cloud developers looking to take advantage of AT&T’s enhanced control, orchestration, management and policy platform in building out software-centric network services.
The agreement calls for Amdocs to help companies interested in the ECOMP platform deploy the open source software into their own networks, as well as help AT&T market the platform globally.
“Achieving better service agility is at the heart of this initiative and is one of the key business imperatives. Using carrier-optimized cloud infrastructure to separate hardware and software layers will increase the value of the network by allowing the rapid onboarding of new services to our customers,” said Anthony Goonetilleke, division president at Amdocs, in a statement. “Together, we will deliver the ECOMP platform to the industry to simplify network environments and drive operational and capital savings, while continuing to accelerate service innovation and network value through agile software powered networks.”
Both firms said they would work to bolster the platform through standardization and contributions to the open source community. AT&T recently said it is moving the ECOMP platform to the open source community, with plans to work with the Linux Foundation on the structure of the open source release.
In touting the platform, AT&T said ECOMP is “mature, feature-complete and tested in real-world deployments. And, we believe it will mature SDN and become the industry standard. Releasing this software into open source levels the worldwide playing field for everyone. Most importantly, we believe this will rapidly accelerate innovation across the cloud and networking ecosystems.”
AT&T unveiled the ECOMP initiative earlier this year, which it said was designed to automate network services and infrastructure running in a cloud environment.
John Donovan, chief strategy officer and group president for technology and operations at AT&T, said the carrier had been working on ECOMP for nearly two years, tackling the project due to a lack of guidance for network functions virtualization and software-defined networking deployments in a wide area network environment. ECOMP is said to provide automation support for service delivery, service assurance, performance management, fault management and SDN tasks. The platform also is designed to work with OpenStack, though Donovan noted it was extensible to other cloud and compute environments.
The carrier recently explained in a blog post that one of the goals for ECOMP is to provide for the “design, creation and lifecycle management of virtualized network functions” in a “flexible, dynamic, policy driven manner” allowing users to “dynamically control ECOMP’s behavior without changing the system software.”
“ECOMP’s policy component allows us to express, interpret and evaluate policies, and then pass them on to other ECOMP components or network elements for enforcement,” said Jen Yates, assistant VP at AT&T Labs. “ECOMP policies capture the service provider’s intelligence – including proprietary domain knowledge related to how a service provider manages networks and services.”
The carrier earlier this year detailed ECOMP’s data collection, analytics and events component, which it said was “responsible for collecting, managing, storing and analyzing data for an ecosystem of control loop automation systems and network and cloud services.”
“Imagine a world where everything is data driven,” said Mazin Gilbert, assistant VP for intelligent systems and platform research at AT&T Labs. “Your network is resilient, self-healing and self-learning. You can create, remove and instantly expand smart virtual functions – southbound network devices (i.e. firewalls, routers and switches) or northbound cloud services (customer care, ambient video, virtual reality, ‘internet of things’). This is possible with the power of ECOMP and DCAE.”
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