NFV Interoperability Testing Initiative formed by Nokia, Cisco, Ericsson and Huawei in pact to accelerate commercial NFV implementations.
A cadre of high-level telecommunication vendors formed the NFV Interoperability Testing Initiative in a move to conquer continued multivendor interoperability testing challenges for network functions virtualization deployments.
The group includes Nokia, Cisco Systems, Ericsson and Huawei, which said they will cooperate through the NFV-ITI memorandum of understanding to support interoperability of NFV elements in “specific customer situations to accelerate the commercial implementations, and to reduce the time-to-market for new applications and services.”
The initiative said it would complement existing NFV interoperability testing activities across the telecom space, but with a focus on testing interoperability configurations of commercial NFV solutions “actually used in the communication service providers’ networks.” Output from the group is expected to include interoperability test cases, test criteria, process, methods, guidelines, templates and testing tools, and noted a specific alignment with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute NFV Industry Specification Group and the Linux Foundation’s Open Platform for NFV project.
While headlined by large, traditional telecom vendors, the group said the initiative was open to all.
“The general guiding principles for NFV-ITI are openness, fairness, reasonableness and nondiscriminatory treatment,” the organization noted in a statement. “All relevant NFV vendors are welcome to join this initiative by ratifying the NFV-ITI MoU.”
OPNFV recently unveiled its Colorado platform release, which includes 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 are integrated into the “automated install/deploy/testing framework.”
OPNFV also highlighted increased collaboration across ecosystems via working groups focused on management and operation; infrastructure; security and testing, with five “committers-at-large” members elected to the OPNFV Technical Steering Committee “to enhance the meritocratic nature of the project.”
A Technology Business Research report from earlier this year found some early adopter telecom operators were moving forward with limited commercial launches of NFV and software-defined networking technologies despite continuing questions around NFV and SDN standards. According to TBR’s “NFV/SDN Telecom Market Landscape” report for the first quarter, these early launches are “leveraging a mix of vendor solutions and internal resources ahead of industry adopted standards,” with cost reduction and service agility seen as key drivers for initial deployments. TBR noted for carriers like AT&T, NFV and SDN are viewed as “critical for long-term survival.”
“Early adopters pursue differing approaches to build NFV and SDN solutions,” the report notes. “One approach is to build an end-to-end NFV stack leveraging products from several vendors. These deployments require tested, interoperable components to ensure carrier-grade delivery. Adding further complexity, operators must decide which vendor, if any, integrates the stack.”
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