Open source-focused NFV organization OPNFV said next release to drop in late March or early April, bolstering telecom move towards software platforms.
The Linux Foundation’s Open Platform for NFV project is looking to unveil a new platform release over the next two months, which will be the fourth platform targeting open source deployments of network functions virtualization.
OPNFV said the pending release is set to be unveiled around the late March or early April timeframe and will be dubbed “Danube,” which keeps with its river-based naming theme. Previous releases included the initial “Arno” release in mid-2015, “Brahmaputra” in early 2016, and “Colorado” last September.
The Colorado release included updates targeted at accelerating the development of NFV applications and services by enhancing security, IPv6 support, service function chaining, testing VPN capabilities and support for multiple hardware architectures. The organization noted the updates followed collaboration with upstream communities and were integrated into the “automated install/deploy/testing framework.”
“We’re seeing a maturity of process with the Colorado release, reflected by things like achievement of the CII Best Practices badge for security and the growing maturity of our testing and [software development and information technology operations] methodology,” said Chris Price, open source manager for SDN, cloud and NFV at Ericsson, at the time of the Colorado release. “The creation of working groups across [management and orchestration], infrastructure, security and testing also help the project evolve towards a foundational and robust industry platform for advanced open source NFV.”
OPNFV was founded in late 2014, with founding members including the likes of AT&T, China Mobile, Cisco, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone.
OPNFV late last year formed its End User Advisory Group tasked with providing technical guidance to the OPNFV developer community working to bring NFV platforms to the telecom space. The advisory group includes representation from AT&T, British Telecom, CableLabs, China Mobile, China Unicom, Cox Communications, Deutsche Telekom, Fidelity Investments, Liberty Global, KDDI, Orange, SK Telecom, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telia Company and Vodafone Group.
In general, telecom operators seem to welcome the help from open source organizations, noting their ability to provide a level of stability assurance for platforms.
“Certainly we are the benefactors of the work that those organizations do,” said John Isch, director of network and voice practice, at Orange Business Services Network and Voice Center of Excellence. “In an ideal world any virtual network function works on any open source system and those organizations hopefully get us closer to that nirvana. In today’s world it’s anything but plug-and-play with VNFs. There is a great deal of testing that needs to be done to ensure a VNF will work with a given orchestration platform. We believe this will only improve from here through the work of these organizations and pressure from the carrier industry.”
OPNFV last June released results of a survey that found an increasingly small percentage of telecom operators had not yet planned for NFV. The survey, which was conducted for OPNFV by Heavy Reading and released at last year’s OPNFV Summit, noted 6% of the more than 90 telecom operators questioned did not have an NFV strategy planned at all, down from 14% in September 2015.
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