HP is working with the likes of Alcatel-Lucent and NSN on a new NFV partner program that will test new network applications, as it launched its own OpenNFV platform.
The vendor is working with a range of companies to give application partners a quicker route to market and NFV-environments where they can test their products.
Among the projects underway are turnkey NFV deployments, including infrastructure as a service, virtual network platform as a service and core network virtualisation.
Michael Clever, Senior Vice-President, Core Cluster, NSN, said: “NSN and HP have been partners for over 20 years, and we are delighted to extend our partnership to provide operators with expert services building on HP’s IT platform technologies and solutions and NSN’s virtualised NFV applications.”
Roy Kaser, Chief Technology Officer and Vice-President, IP Platforms, Alcatel Lucent, said: “We can rely on HP for their expertise in NFV and in x86 technology, which enables us to free up R&D investment dollars to focus more on innovative software technology.”
Among the applications and services being offered as part of OpenNFV are a virtual home subscriber server, allowing networks to manage subscriber identities across several networks, a financial services product, offering asset management for operators, and multimedia services environment, which groups together network applications into a common infrastructure and automatically launches new multimedia apps for its customers.
Bill Veghte, Executive Vice-President and General Manager, Enterprise Group, HP, said: “NFV represents one of the most significant shifts the telecommunication
industry has experienced in 20 years. Throught HP’s OpenNFV Program, we are bringing together a strong partner ecosystem and enabling our customers to leverage new market opportunities faster while managing spiraling costs.”
The partner project and platform launch alongside HP’s OpenNFV Reference Architecture, an ecosystem which spans physical servers, storage and networking, virtualisation, controllers for SDN, resource management and orchestration, analytics, telco applications and an Operations Support System.
It also includes SDN capabilities such as its SDN ecosystem, Virtual Services Router, hosted public clouds and virtualised branch Customer Premise Equipment deployments.
Nav Chander, Analyst and Research Manager at IDC, said: “An open ecosystem that accelerates testing, integration and ultimately, innovation is what will enable CSPs to better compete and address new revenue opportunities for value-added virtualised service and application-based offerings.”