New investments advance development and community growth of open source network functions virtualization
SAN FRANCISCO, February 3, 2015 — The OPNFV Project, a community-led industry supported open source reference platform for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced that Enea, Korea Telecom, SK Telecom, Spirent and Xilinx are joining the project to advance the industry’s first integrated, open source NFV platform.
Launched in September 2014, OPNFV is enabling widespread collaboration between users and vendors who are developing an integrated and tested open source NFV reference platform that can enable faster implementation of new products and services. With a growing member base now totaling 49 members and a community gearing up for its first software release, OPNFV is leading the way toward broad adoption of open source NFV.
“Having a neutral place where the industry can collaborate on code development will help bring NFV to market faster,” said Heather Kirksey, director of NFV, OPNFV. “Our newest members are committed to advancing open source NFV and we welcome their unique perspectives on everything from real-time operating systems to large-scale network management to programmable devices. We invite anyone who is curious about OPNFV to join our weekly technical calls that are open to the public and participate in discussions.”
More on the newest OPNFV members, listed in alphabetical order:
Enea, headquartered in Sweden, is a global supplier of Linux and real-time operating system solutions, including middleware, tools, databases, and world class services, with a vision to enable communication everywhere.
“The OPNFV project presents a great opportunity for Enea to contribute with our expertise, accelerate innovation and retain our leading position as an Independent Software Vendor in the communication space,” said Daniel Forsgren, senior vice president, product management, Enea. “We are excited to join and collaborate with the developer community in this neutral and open community to advance NFV.”
Korea Telecom (KT) is Korea’s national telecommunications provider who has been leading the NFV adoption efforts in Korea. KT has committed to the adoption of newer technologies to ensure quality service to its customers.
“For KT, SDN/NFV is the key technology to reduce cost for network infrastructure and to implement services delivering new customer experience. KT currently reviews the application of the technologies in various directions for the key infrastructure,” noted HongBeom Jeon, head, infrastructure R&D laboratory, KT. “We expect that OPNFV will help us to establish agile NFV infrastructure and to deliver the benefits of software-defined infrastructure to our customers.”
SK Telecom, headquartered in Seoul, is Korea’s largest telecommunications company with more than 28 million mobile subscribers, accounting for over 50 percent of the market. SK Telecom is also seeking new growth engines by building ICT convergence business models in areas of healthcare, enterprise solutions, media and education.
“Faster adoption of NFV is critical to prepare the next generation of mobile networks and 5G architectures and to facilitate the NFV ecosystem,” said Alex Jinsung Choi, chief technology officer, SK Telecom. “We are eager to collaborate with the OPNFV community to advance the implementation of NFV in the industry.”
Spirent Communications is the global leader in developing innovative test solutions that allow IT and communications industries to evaluate the performance, agility and security of the latest technologies, infrastructure and applications being deployed worldwide.
“As the industry is transitioning toward virtualization of networks and applications, validation of SDN and NFV technologies is becoming mission-critical. Joining OPNFV is a natural fit for us as the community’s goal aligns with Spirent’s mission of validating NFV foundational elements and accelerating their adoption in service providers, data center and enterprise environments,” said Neil Holmquist, senior director, product marketing and management, Spirent Communications. “We are eager to share our test and measurement expertise with OPNFV community.”
Xilinx is a leading provider of All Programmable technologies and devices, beyond hardware to software, digital to analog, and single to multiple die in 3D ICs.
“Xilinx is excited to contribute to OPNFV,” said Gilles Garcia, director of wired communication at Xilinx. “We are hopeful that the open source NFV platform will help us address the ever-evolving demands of next-generation networks and enable new technologies.”
Anyone can participate in the OPNFV community regardless of affiliation or location. Technology contributions, concepts or ideas can be shared here. Join the discussions, listen to the debates and contribute to the advancement of open source NFV.
About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)
Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using NFV. It brings together service providers, vendors and users to collaborate in an open forum on advancing the state-of-the-art in NFV. For more information, please visit: http://www.opnfv.org.
OPNFV is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems.www.linuxfoundation.org
Additional Resources
Media Inquires
Prathima Ramesh
OPNFV Project
pr@opnfv.org