Competing mobile industry standards bodies have united to agree on a common approach to information modelling in network functions virtualisation, amid fears it is too fragmented.
Standard bodies and open source communities met this week in Colorado, USA, in the first step of trying to accelerate the alignment of each of their activities.
The meeting was convened by ETSI NFV and also included representatives from 3GPP, ATIS, Broadband Forum, DMTF, IETF, ITU-T SG 15, MEF, OASIS/TOSCA, Open Cloud Connect, ONF, OpenDaylight, OPNFV and TM-Forum. ETSI said other interested parties are welcome to get involved.
According to ETSI, the adoption of NFV is being stymied by a range of different data models being used by standards organisations and open source developers.
This disparity in models is leading to “increased cost and delaying time to market”, said the standards organisation.
One standard for information modelling is seen as important because it allows telcos to deliver NFV’s services and network automation capabilities in a more efficient way.
Another advantage is it will lead to open APIs, allowing the technology to be more efficiently integrated across the industry.
The meeting resulted in a collaboration plan being devised to address the challenges and opportunities that information modelling can provide.
CableLabs’ Don Clarke, Chair of the ETSI NFV Network Operator Council, said: “It was a privilege for CableLabs to be able to host this unique event which brought together over 90 of the world’s leading experts on information modelling. A delegate from a leading European operator told me that he sees this multi-SDO collaboration as being the key to unlocking the barriers to NFV adoption. The operator group will continue to be actively involved to facilitate this industry collaboration and to help ensure it delivers what the industry needs for NFV.”