The operator wants faster onboarding of applications, and simpler operations and management of product lifecycles
The UK’s Virgin Media O2 chose Canonical’s Charmed OSM (open-source MANO) system as its production-ready orchestration platform for automated hybrid workload management. The platform is Canonical’s upstream distribution of ETSI’s open-source management and orchestration (MANO) software stack for virtualised network deployments.
OSM offers a generic approach to managing network functions and orchestration in physical, virtual, containerised and hybrid environments. It is intended to reduce the complexity of service lifecycle management and minimises errors and operating costs.
Canonical claims that by operating cloud workloads with Charmed OSM, Virgin Media O2 will benefit from greater agility and scalability, and optimised migration to network functions virtualisation (NFV).
Less complexity and cost
Charmed OSM should help Virgin Media O2 reduce costs from the start by providing through its approach and simplifying initial configuration and daily operational tasks.
Alex Boyd, Head of Telco Cloud at Virgin Media O2 said, “Telco Cloud is our strategic, on-premise platform that hosts core network functions, like 5G. Telco Cloud enables us to provide the best services for millions of Virgin Media O2 customers.”
Canonical describes Charmed OSM as a carrier-grade, model-driven OSM, with enterprise support and long-term security updates, for the open source community, partners, and telcos. It accelerates migration to NFV by automating production and covering the end-to-end lifecycle of network services by orchestrating service and resource.
Canonical supports Charmed OSM on a subscription basis, with telco-grade service level agreements. It can be deployed in a highly available mode, is resilient against failures, and allows telcos to meet their digital transformation goal, according to the software house.
Virgin Media O2 has onboarded telco workloads with Charmed OSM and is managing the lifecycle, including virtualised and containerised deployments by multiple vendors like Mavenir and Oracle. To reduce integration efforts between vendors, Charmed OSM consumes open published information and data models aligned with ETSI’s NFV standards.
Other partners
Mavenir implemented its signalling firewall and is in the process of deploying its cloud-native virtualised(IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) for its fixed deployment with the operator using Charmed OSM.
Minsait deployed the project, intregating multiple Charmed OSM sites and onboarding network services from different vendors. Charmed OSM’s model-driven architecture enabled Minsait to deploy the MANO infrastructure rapidly.
Francisco Rodriguez. NFV Projects Manager at Minsait, noted, “OSM is becoming a key enabler of the deployment of 5G for our clients. The compliance with standards, maturity and independence of any network function vendor make it the best fit to the current needs of telco operators. OSM.”