Announcements

Networking community unites to accelerate open source NFV via collaboration

SAN FRANCISCO, May 5, 2016–The OPNFV Project, a community-led, industry supported open source platform for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced the preliminary lineup of keynotes and sessions for its second annual OPNFV Summit. Hosted by The Linux Foundation, the Summit takes place in Berlin June 20-23, 2016 and brings together leading developers, communities and organizations within the networking industry.

OPNFV Summit is an annual conference to collaborate, innovate and explore the latest developments in NFV with keynotes, technical sessions and hands-on design workshops hosted by industry leaders. This year’s topics range from working with upstream projects to performance, containers, MANO, DevOps, and more. In addition, the Summit provides a forum for the community to explore OPNFV’s second platform release, Brahmaputra, via collaborative hands-on support, use cases, testing scenarios, and in-depth discussion to help refine the code as the project prepares for the third release, Colorado. The week will also feature a Design Summit, a technology showcase, PoC zone, project theater, and networking events, including an OPNFV Orientation designed to help newcomers to the project –both technical and non-technical–become familiar with the OPNFV project and community and how to get started.

Headlined by renowned TED speaker and security expert Mikko Hyppönen, this year’s lineup of confirmed keynote speakers include:

• Mikko Hyppönen, security and privacy expert, chief research officer, F-Secure

• “MANO a MANO: End users on the NFV Frontier and What Lies Ahead,” panel moderated by Caroline Chappell, industry analyst, Heavy Reading. Other participants include:  Margaret Chiosi, distinguished network architect, AT&T Labs; Deng Hui, principal staff, China Mobile; Axel Clauberg, vice president, IP and Optical Architecture, Deutsche Telekom; Diego Lopez, senior technology expert, Telefonica; and David Amzallag, head of Network Virtualization, SDN and NFV, Vodafone.

• Susan James, head of Product Line NFV Infrastructure, Business Unit Cloud & IP, Ericsson

• Prodip Sen, chief technology officer, NFV, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise

• Forrest Lee, OPNFV Open Source Development team director, Huawei

• John Healy, general manager, Software Defined Networking Division, Network Platforms Group, Intel

• Chris Wright, vice president and chief technologist, Red Hat

For the full Summit agenda, please visit http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit/attend/agenda.

“Building on the tremendous momentum from the inaugural OPNFV Summit last November, we’re excited to host the 2016 Summit in the heart of Europe,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “The Summit is a unique, collaborative forum for solving real-world problems and together, charting the course for open source NFV.”

The Summit also includes a developer Design Summit June 20-21, 2016, where the technical community will convene to continue work on the next OPNFV release, Colorado, conduct tutorials, hold project breakout sessions and impromptu or “un-conference”- style meetups. This is the largest gathering of OPNFV developers from around the globe each year.  Hosted in parallel will be community events for the OpenDaylight Project, ONOS+ CORD Mini Summit and the ARM NFV Ecosystem Mini Summit.

Standard registration ends May 20, 2016, after which pricing increases from $325 to $425 USD. To see the current program and register for the OPNFV Summit, please visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit.

OPNFV Summit is made possible with generous support from sponsors including of Diamond sponsor Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Platinum sponsors Ericsson, Huawei, Intel and Red Hat.

About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)

Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible 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

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Community delivers lab-ready platform that integrates and tests key NFV features at end-to-end system level

SAN FRANCISCO, March 1, 2016 — The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced the availability of OPNFV Brahmaputra, the community’s second platform release. With the delivery of rich platform-level testing of NFV functionality and use cases, Brahmaputra is OPNFV’s first full experience with a massively parallel simultaneous release process. Brahmaputra demonstrates the ability to collaborate with upstream communities on feature development, address multiple technology components across the ecosystem and advance stability, performance, automation and hardened features.

OPNFV facilitates collaboration among the 165+ developers from network operators, solution providers and vendors who focus on integration, deployment and testing of upstream components to address NFV needs. Brahmaputra’s rigorous integration process pulled the latest code from upstream communities—including OpenStack, OpenDaylight, OpenContrail, ONOS and ETSI—while more than 30 accepted projects contributed new capabilities, specifications and community resources.

“Building on the foundation of Arno, the OPNFV community worked tirelessly to integrate and combine components from multiple communities to deliver Brahmaputra, which brings end-to-end feature realization,” said Chris Price, technical steering committee chair, OPNFV and Open Source Manager for SDN, Cloud & NFV, Ericsson. “The impact is substantial; we’ve now established methodologies and mechanisms for further cross-project and feature development.”

Key enhancements in OPNFV Brahmaputra include:

•  Hardened feature enhancements.
  •  Layer 3 VPN instantiation and configuration
  • Initial support for IPv6 deployment and testing in IPv6 environments,
  • Improved fault detection and recovery capabilities via work in OpenStack Neutron and Ceilometer as well as collaborative development work with DPDK
  •  Initial Service Function Chaining capabilities via OpenDaylight Beryllium
  • Basic resource reservation via a shim layer on top of OpenStack
  •  Enhancements in performance and throughput via data plane acceleration and NFV-focused enhancements in OVS and KVM
• Enhanced testing capabilities. Extending the suite of functional tests developed in Arno, Brahmaputra adds system-level testing and multiple performance testing frameworks and methodologies. The Yardstick Project implements system-level validation with baseline testing requirements as outlined in the ETSI TST 001 spec. Additional improvements include detailed vSwitch performance characterization, bottoms-up system performance benchmarking, and the implementation of a performance bottleneck-focused testing framework.
•  Infrastructure and testing environment advancements. In addition to the bare metal lab hosted by the Linux Foundation, community Pharos labs were used to release validation for Brahmaputra. Additionally, OPNFV’s Jenkins-based continuous integration and continuous deployment toolchain has made great strides in automating all integration and deployment scenarios and associated testing frameworks.
•  Deployment and integration enhancements. Brahmaputra contains an increased number of components and scenarios, including support for additional SDN controllers and installers, such as OpenStack Liberty and OpenDaylight Beryllium, which can be used to build the platform.

“The strength of any open source project depends on the community developing it,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “With an entire industry involved in the development of NFV, we’re seeing more collaboration among key stakeholders across the ecosystem. The strides we made in Brahmaputra create a framework for even more developers to come together and make progress in the journey to NFV.”

Brahmaputra will deliver the entire set of deployment scenarios incrementally, with additional scenarios becoming available in a set of monthly releases as they achieve stability.

OPNFV is also planning its first plugfest which will take place the week of May 9th, 2016 at the CableLabs headquarters in Louisville, CO. The plugfest will give the industry the opportunity to collaborate and test interoperability of different products with the Brahmaputra release.

Comments from upstream open source projects and standards organizations:

ETSI

“We congratulate the OPNFV Community on the Brahmaputra release of their NFV Reference Platform. The system level validation testing in the YardStick Project using requirements from ETSI’s DGS NFV TST 001 is an important step towards establishing and maintaining interoperability,” said Steven Wright, Chair ETSI NFV ISG. We’re looking forward to further collaborative efforts to enable an ecosystem supporting VNFs.”

ONOS

“We are pleased to see integration of ONOS Emu as a controller option in the OPNFV Brahmaputra release,” said Bill Snow, VP of Engineering with the Open Networking Laboratory (ON.Lab). “We congratulate OPNFV on this major release and look forward to continuing open collaboration with our upstream project to provide the SDN network control needed for future VNFaaS, NFV management and orchestration capabilities.”

OpenContrail

“We are excited to be a part of the journey with OPNFV by integrating our OpenContrail SDN solution into Brahmaputra, said Parantap Lahiri, senior director of engineering, Juniper Networks. “Based on the principles of open architecture and collaboration, integrating OpenContrail’s key features—such as IPv6 and VNF service chaining—into Brahmaputra further strengthens the OPNFV Project, enhancing our users’ NFV services and experiences. We look forward to continuing this journey as a part of the OPNFV family.”

OpenDaylight

“It’s great to see that in just 18 months, OPNFV has gone from idea to reality, playing a major role in accelerating the development of open source NFV within the industry,” said Neela Jacques, executive director, OpenDaylight. “Our community has worked closely with and contributed significantly to OPNFV’s Brahmaputra release. Brahmaputra significantly leverages the newest OpenDaylight platform features from our recently released Beryllium release. We congratulate the OPNFV community on very important release and look forward to continuing to support their success.”

OpenStack

“The OPNFV Brahmaputra release delivers on the strong collaboration between the OpenStack and OPNFV communities,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director, OpenStack Foundation. “In addition to upgrading to Liberty, the latest OpenStack release, you’ll see additional OpenStack features and projects incorporated into Brahmaputra, further accelerating the areas of networking, IPv6, Service Function Chaining, monitoring, fault management, and installation options, among others. We’re looking forward to combined efforts toward enhancing the integrated open source NFV platform.”

Information about OPNFV Brahmaputra is available here: https://www.opnfv.org/brahmaputra.

To learn more about OPNFV Brahmaputra, or for information on how to participate in the OPNFV project, visit: https://www.opnfv.org/

About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)

Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible 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 project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation projects harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. www.linuxfoundation.org

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Additional Resources

• Getting Started with OPNFV
• OPNFV Resources
• OPNFV Blog
• OPNFV Events

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Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
pr@opnfv.org

OPNFV Summit brings together service providers, networking industry and open source communities to advance open source NFV

SAN FRANCISCO, February 3, 2016 – The OPNFV Project, a community-led, industry supported open source platform for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced that registration and the call for speaking proposals for the second-annual OPNFV Summit is now open. The Summit brings together the communities, developers, and companies in the networking industry that are working together to accelerate NFV deployments. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the OPNFV Summit  will take place in Berlin, Germany, June 20-23, 2016.

Serving as the premier venue for the industry to collaborate with peers on actualizing NFV, OPNFV Summit includes keynotes, technical sessions and hands-on design workshops hosted by industry leaders. Topics range from OPNFV use cases, best practices on working with upstream projects, performance and security, working with standards bodies, and much more. The inaugural OPNFV Summit held in Burlingame, Calif. November 2015 hosted more than 700 attendees from across the industry to hear insights and expertise from some of the brightest industry luminaries. Highlights included a “Voice of the End User” keynote panel featuring executives from AT&T, Lucera, Google, Merck and Orange; original technical tracks covering everything from PoCs to security to benchmarking; plus a Design Forum that attracted 275 attendees for tutorials, project sessions and breakouts, and events.

“Just like OPNFV itself, the Summit serves as an integration point for the NFV ecosystem,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “Hands-on education, exploration and engagement with the technology is so important, especially amidst a climate of such rapid innovation. I can’t wait to connect with the community in Berlin, and I encourage anyone interested in the project to join us.”

Speaker proposals are now being accepted for the Summit. The deadline to submit a proposal is Thursday, March 31, 2015.

The Summit also includes a developer Design Summit June 20-21, 2016 where technical content from the OPNFV projects and releases will be presented, discussed, and debated.

Early registration closes February 29, 2016, after which time the conference will increase from $225 to the standard registration price of $325. To register for the OPNFV Summit, please visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit/attend/registration.

To view the OPNFV Summit 2016 sponsorship prospectus, please visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit/sponsors

About the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)

Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible 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 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
How to Participate
OPNFV Resources
OPNFV Blog
OPNFV Events

Media Inquires
Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
pr@opnfv.org

OPNFV member roster expands as research institutes and software vendors commit to help advance state-of-the-art open source NFV platform

SAN FRANCISCO, January 19, 2016 — The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced that Openet, a supplier of real-time BSS (business support systems) to communication service providers, has joined as a Silver member while the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) have joined as Associate members.  Launched just over a year ago, the OPNFV project is supported by a growing group of 55+ member companies committed to advancing a flexible, open source framework for NFV.

“I’m thrilled to kick off the new year by welcoming three new organizations to OPNFV,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “Openet brings a wealth of telecom software development experience to the community, and with research institutions ETRI and UNH-IOL with their expertise in testing and Compliance & Certification also joining, I’m eager to see where this range of perspectives takes the project in 2016.”

ETRI, a non-profit government-funded research institute, has been at the forefront of technological excellence since 1976. Contributions include the development of TDX (Time Division Exchange) and 4M DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory); the commercialization of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and the Terrestrial DMB, WiBro, and 4G LTE Advanced, which became the foundation of mobile communications. Most recently, as a global ICT leader, ETRI has been advancing communication and convergence by developing SAN (Ship Area Network) technology, Genie Talk (world class portable automatic interpretation; Korean-English/Japanese/Chinese), and automated valet parking technology.

“The future of network technology depends on implementations of the NFV platform that go beyond the Physical Network Function,” said Sun Hee Yang, senior director, ETRI. “Joining OPNFV will enable greater access to open collaboration with other researchers and developers across the globe who are working to shape the future of networking. We’re excited to become a part of the community and contribute our expertise and resources to building a strong open NFV platform.”

Openet is the leading independent supplier of real-time BSS (business support systems) to communication service providers. Openet software ensures that more than 600 million mobile telecoms users around the world enjoy the best network and data experience while enabling operators to monetize data use in ‘real-time’. Since its foundation in 1999, Openet has constantly been at the forefront of telecoms software development and innovation. This is characterized by its open platform, domain experience and engineering expertise. Its success is personified by the many long-term relationships it has fostered with the largest, most progressive, and demanding operators across the globe.

Joe Hogan, Openet CTO stated: “Openet has long supported solutions that are virtualized, vendor- agnostic and built using open standards. We are delighted to be part of OPNFV and look forward to contributing to the OPNFV carrier-grade platform to help enable operators deliver a faster time-to-market for new services and new revenue streams.”

The UNH-IOL is a well-known independent, third-party laboratory dedicated to broad-based testing and standards conformance services for networking industries. Since 1988, the lab has fostered multi-vendor interoperability while preparing students for careers in the industry. The UNH-IOL has grown steadily into one of the industry’s premier independent testing labs for new technologies and a hub for developing custom test solutions.

“We’re proud to be joining the existing community of experts working together toward the common goal of accelerating open source NFV,” said Erica Johnson, director, UNH-IOL. “We’re looking forward to leveraging our Associate membership in OPNFV to exchange research, resources and testing with like-minded community members and help shape the future of networking.”

With more than 100 developers from both service providers and commercial suppliers collaborating on the development of an open source, carrier-grade, integrated platform for NFV, the community is hard at work on its second release, Brahmaputra, due next month.  Brahmaputra will bring additional projects and features to the platform as well as additional documentation. An early look at what’s coming in Brahmaputra is available here, and details on the first OPNFV release, Arno, are available here.

About the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)

Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible 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 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
How to Participate
OPNFV Resources
OPNFV Blog
OPNFV Events

Media Inquires
Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
pr@opnfv.org

OPNFV member base grows as SUSE commits to help advance state-of-the-art open source NFV platform

SAN FRANCISCO, December 8, 2015 — The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced that SUSE has joined as a Platinum member to advance open source NFV. The company joins existing Platinum members AT&T, Brocade, China Mobile, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Ericsson, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, NEC, Nokia Networks, NTT DOCOMO, Red Hat, Telecom Italia, Vodafone, and ZTE.

SUSE, a pioneer in open source software, provides reliable, interoperable Linux, cloud infrastructure and storage solutions that give enterprises greater control and flexibility. More than 23 years of engineering excellence, exceptional service and an unrivaled partner ecosystem power the products and support that help their customers manage complexity, reduce cost, and confidently deliver mission-critical services.

“For both enterprises and communications technology companies, software-defined networking has become a critical element of developing and delivering next-generation services,” said Michael Miller, vice president of global alliances and marketing at SUSE. “We’re excited to engage and contribute to the OPNFV project because working together as a community we will deliver a common, open source platform that will accelerate innovation and benefit all our partners and customers.”

“We’re pleased to welcome SUSE as the newest OPNFV Platinum member,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “SUSE’s expertise in both open source and enterprise software is an integral addition to our collaborative efforts of advancing open source NFV.”

Alan Clark, director of industry initiatives, emerging standards and open source at SUSE will join the OPNFV board of directors. He also serves as the OpenStack chair of the board of directors and brings a wealth of open source experience to OPNFV. SUSE has been actively involved in many upstream communities including Ceph, KVM and OpenStack.

With more than 100 developers from both commercial suppliers and service providers collaborating on the development of an open source, carrier-grade, integrated platform for NFV, the project is hard at work on its second release, Brahmaputra, due early next year. Brahmaputra will bring additional projects and features to the platform as well as increased documentation. Details on the first OPNFV release, Arno, are available here.

 

About the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)

Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible 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 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

How to Participate

OPNFV Resources

OPNFV Blog

Media Inquires

Jill Lovato

OPNFV Project

pr@opnfv.org

Over Half of Telecom Professionals Surveyed say OPNFV is Poised to Help Accelerate Adoption of Network Functions Virtualization

SAN FRANCISCO, OPNFV Summit,  November 11, 2015 – The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced the results of a global survey commissioned by Heavy Reading to understand vendor and telecommunication professionals’ perceptions of OPNFV and how the project can help accelerate NFV transformation. After just one year, the data indicated the majority (86 percent) of telecommunication professionals surveyed either strongly or somewhat agree that OPNFV will accelerate the adoption of NFV in the industry overall.

“I’m delighted to see that the industry believes in the importance of what we’re doing,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “Our collaborative efforts to create an integrated, tested and open platform to drive NFV adoption are still in their infancy, but the results of this survey indicate we’re on the right path. It’s important we get a pulse on what the industry needs so we can refine our approach, and focus our efforts on what will best help us accelerate the transformation of open source NFV.”

Designed to gauge market perceptions of the OPNFV project and its role in shaping open source NFV, the survey provides a baseline of how the industry views the project’s impact. The data from telecommunication and vendor professionals looks at the drivers, barriers, timelines and critical upstream integration needed for OPNFV to succeed in advancing open source NFV adoption.

Key findings include:

• OPNFV is poised to accelerate NFV adoption overall. When asked about the benefits of the project, over half of telecom professionals surveyed said that OPNFV is poised to accelerate adoption of NFV, while more than 62 percent said it would lead to more rapid development. Similarly, ‘easier integration’ was cited as the number one benefit of OPNFV, at 74 percent.

 

• Swimming upstream is very important to OPNFV’s success. The majority (68 percent) of respondents cited upstream open source project OpenStack as very important to the success of OPNFV, while close to half cited additional projects including OpenvSwitch (47 percent), Carrier Grade Linux (42 percent), OpenDaylight (40 percent), and KVM (37 percent).

 

• NFV deployments are still young. 26 percent of respondents are in the testing/proof-of-concept phase of their NFV deployment while as many as 19 percent of indicated their organizations are in full NFV deployment.  Nearly 60 percent are actively exploring NFV with 33 percent developing their NFV strategy already.
• Key success criteria include security, VNF interoperability as well as management and orchestration.  Telcos and vendors cited a handful of technologies—including security, VNF interoperability, management and orchestration, OSS/BSS integration, skills training and containers—as the technologies most important to the success of OPNFV.

 

The survey results, which include input from over 200 telco and service provider professionals across North America, Europe and Asia, were shared on-stage during the first annual OPNFV Summit, which brings together innovators, developers and end users who are committed to advancing the creation of an open source framework for NFV. More details on the survey results are available here.

Project Announces CENGN as First Associate Member

Also announced during the Summit, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN) joined OPNFV as the first Associate member. Open to academic and nonprofit organizations that are passionate about helping to accelerate open source NFV, Associate membership requires significant technical contributions to the project.

CENGN is a consortium of industry, academic and research leaders dedicated to accelerating the commercialization of next-generation communications solutions. CENGN’s internationally recognized testing centre employs interoperability between multiple software and hardware products. Their state-of-the-art physical and virtual multi-vendor, test, certification and validation platform provides a unique environment to commercialize advanced products, applications and services.

“CENGN is very happy to join OPNFV as the first Associate Member,” said Ritch Dusome, President and CEO of Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next-Generation Networks (CENGN).  “Our team has followed the development of OPNFV and its activities for more than a year now, and we believe it is on track to make a significant impact in the SDN and NFV environment.  We look forward to contributing to OPNFV and its objectives, and adding value to its growing membership.  Building on our strengths, CENGN will investigate new features, functions and deployable OPNFV releases that can be integrated into our industry-led Proof-of-Concept projects. In addition, CENGN will further contribute to the OPNFV community by adding a Pharos CI Lab in our Data Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.”

About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)

Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible 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

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Additional Resources

• Getting Started with OPNFV
• OPNFV Resources
• OPNFV Blog
• OPNFV Events

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Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
pr@opnfv.org

New members commit to advance open source Network Functions Virtualization

SAN FRANCISCO, October 20, 2015 — The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced that Freescaleand KDDI R&D Labs have joined as Silver members while Morgan Richomme of Orange has been appointed to the Board of Directors as the first technical community representative. Launched just one year ago, the OPNFV project is supported by 19 Platinum and 36 Silver member companies committed to advancing the creation of a flexible, open source framework for NFV.

With over 100 developers from both commercial suppliers and service providers collaborating on the development of an open source, carrier-grade, integrated platform for NFV, the project has issued an update to its first release, Arno, and is hard at work on its second release due early next year.

“We are seeing vibrant collaboration coming from the OPNFV community across many  sectors, which is key to accelerating the open source software development of NFV,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “Our newest Silver members, Freescale and KDDI R&D Labs, which bring additional semiconductor and telecoms expertise to the project, are a welcome addition. We’d also like to congratulate Morgan Richomme of Orange on his appointment to the Board of Directors. His strong network architecture experience is an asset and we are happy to have his guiding input.”

More on the newest OPNFV members, listed in alphabetical order:

Freescale Semiconductor enables secure, embedded processing solutions for the Internet of Tomorrow. Freescale’s solutions drive a more innovative and connected world, simplifying our lives and making us safer. While serving the world’s largest companies, Freescale is also committed to supporting science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, enabling the next generation of innovators.

“Offering industry-leading multicore processors based on ARM technology, Freescale is committed to creating a vibrant, open and competitive NFV ecosystem,” said Sam Fuller, director of strategy for Freescale’s Digital Networking group. “The OPNFV platform helps ensure carriers have access to the best silicon, software and system technologies for building next-generation networks, and Freescale is pleased to join the OPNFV project to contribute our processing and networking expertise in support of the OPNFV project’s goals.”

KDDI R&D Labs Inc., a subsidiary of KDDI Corp., conducts research and development on next-generation information and communication technologies in a wide range of fields, from mobile wireless technology to social media analytics. Specific to SDN and NFV, KDDI R&D Labs have successfully completed Proof-of-Concepts (POCs) of closed-loop automated operation by using management technologies tightly related to OPNFV projects.

“We strongly believe that open source software and community will help accelerate its R&D process, and we understand the importance of SDN/NFV platform and relevant open innovation efforts,” said Yasuyuki Nakajima, president, chief executive officer, KDDI R&D Labs. “We also hope that our experiences in future mobile networking as well as fixed networking contribute to OPNFV project activities.”

Elected by OPNFV technical committers to increase developer and technical share of voice on the Board of Directors, Morgan Richomme of Orange was named the first Committer member of the Board.

“I am thrilled to join the OPNFV Board of Directors, representing the developer community in the trenches,” said Morgan Richomme, NFV architect, Orange. “OPNFV is unique in that it combines both the Cloud IT and traditional telecoms industries, which are both necessary to solve NFV. It facilitates broad collaboration in building a flexible platform for NFV in an industry on the precipice of transformation.”

Results from OPNFV’s annual Silver member election re-appointed current members, including: Bob Monkman, segment marketing manager, ARM; Chris Donley, director, virtualization and network evolution, CableLabs; Cliff Young, founder and CEO, ClearPath Networks; and John Zannos, VP, worldwide alliances/ business development/ cloud platform Canonical.

OPNFV is preparing for the inaugural OPNFV Summit in Burlingame, Calif. November 9-12, 2015. The Summit will enable collaboration between service providers and networking industry and open source communities to advance the development and adoption of an open source NFV platform. More details on the OPNFV Summit, including agenda and registration, are available here: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit

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 flexible 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
Getting Started with OPNFV
Joining the OPNFV Community
OPNFV Blog
OPNFV Events

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Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
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Networking community comes together to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using open source NFV

SAN FRANCISCO, August 14, 2015 – The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced keynotes for the first annual OPNFV Summit taking place in Burlingame, Calif., November 11-12, 2015. As the industry turns to open source NFV, the OPNFV Summit brings together innovators, developers and end users who are committed to advance the creation of a flexible, open source framework for NFV.

The OPNFV Summit is a new, annual conference designed to provide a collaboration and education space for NFV. It will bring together the community, projects, products and companies in the networking industry that are accelerating NFV deployments. The Summit also includes a Hackfest on November 9-10, 2015, an opportunity for developers and community members to come together to contribute to ongoing projects and the OPNFV codebase.

As OPNFV recently issued its first software release, Arno, the Summit provides a forum for the community to explore the release, learn how it is being tested and get hands-on support. The community will have the opportunity for collaboration and in-depth discussions on takeaways from Arno that will help in refining the code as the project prepares for the second release, Brahmaputra, as well as provide feedback on what they’d most like to see moving forward. Additionally, the Summit will feature a plethora of demonstrations from the OPNFV community showcasing the latest and greatest innovations in NFV.

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

• Sandra Rivera, VP, Data Center Group; general manager of Intel’s Network Platforms Group, Intel Corporation; OPNFV marketing chair
• Prodip Sen, chief technology officer, HP’s NFV business unit
• Chris Wright, technical director of SDN and NFV, Red Hat; OPNFV board member
• Yang Zhiqiang, deputy general manager of China Mobile Research Institute
• “Voice of the End User” keynote panel: moderated by Ulf Ewaldsson, CTO, Ericsson; Andre Fuetsch, SVP, Architecture & Design, AT&T; Jacob Loveless, CEO, Lucera; Bikash Koley, principal architect & director, Network Architecture and Engineering, Google; Hal Stern, executive director of Advanced Technology and IT Planning, Merck
• “Strategic Technology Upstream” keynote panel: Jonathan Bryce, executive director, OpenStack Foundation; Neela Jacques, executive director, OpenDaylight; Pere Monclus, founder & CTO, PLUMgrid; Brandon Phillips, CTO, CoreOS; Reynold Xin, co-founder, Databricks

“We are pleased to announce a strong keynote lineup of industry experts for the inaugural OPNFV Summit,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “Their voices and expertise help map the way forward as we work together to build out a carrier-grade NFV platform. The Summit offers a collaborative environment for open source communities and industry experts to integrate, debate and share as they work together to solve real-world problems.”

Early registration closes August 30, 2015 after which the conference price will increase from $199 to $299. Discounted hotel rates are also available until October 19, 2015. To see the current program and register for the OPNFV Summit, please visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit.

OPNFV Summit is made possible with the generous support of Platinum sponsors HP, Intel and Red Hat. For the full list of current event sponsors, visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-summit/sponsors/our-sponsors.

About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)

Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible 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

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New members commit to advance open source Network Functions Virtualization

SAN FRANCISCO, June 30, 2015 — The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using NFV, today announced that Altera, Brain4Net and CertusNet have joined as Silver members. Launched in September 2014, the OPNFV project is supported by 60 member companies who are committed to advance the creation of a flexible, open source framework for NFV.

The project has united over 100 developers from service providers and commercial suppliers to collaborate on the development of a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible platform for NFV. The community recently delivered its first software release, Arno, which sets the foundation necessary to build the NFV reference platform.

“Collaboration is key to accelerating the open source software development of NFV, and with Arno now available, we’re seeing that vision materialize,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “We look forward to the contributions our newest members will bring to the community with their knowledge of FPGA technologies and orchestration and control solutions for SDN and VNF.”

More on the newest OPNFV members, listed in alphabetical order:

Altera® programmable solutions enable designers of electronic systems to rapidly and cost effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Altera offers field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), system on chips (SoCs), complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs) and complementary technologies, such as power management, to provide high-value solutions to customers worldwide).

“As Altera continues to innovate and offer competitive products and technologies to meet the demands of future networks, we find it important to support OPNFV,” said Francis Chow, vice president and general manager of Altera’s Communications Business Unit. “By leveraging our knowledge of FPGA technology for the communications industry, we add value to creating the de facto industry standard NFV platform.”

The Brain4 Net platform delivers comprehensive network orchestration and control solutions for multi-vendor network infrastructures. It provides network orchestration platform, SDN controller and set Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs). Their approach helps organizations bring agility to networks, improve network service chaining and reduce both CAPEX and OPEX for network infrastructure deployment and operations.

“We’re excited to become part of the OPNFV community and share our expertise to speed the implementation of open source NFV,” said Oleg Schapov, CEO, Brain4Net. “We realize the power that open source software has in bringing innovative network solutions to market faster, and we’re eager to bring Brain4Net’s expertise in SDN, NFV and orchestration to the project.”

CertusNet is a leading innovation-driven provider of core technologies and Elastic Network solutions in China. The company focuses on elastic cloud services, triple play streaming media monitoring, smart city business platform and customer experience assurance. The company offers a full suite of products and solutions including: Elastic network based on SDN and NFV, end-to-end customer experience assurance (CEA), and Elastic cloud services.

“OPNFV’s approach to open source NFV benefits the entire industry, and we look forward to sharing our expertise in cloud computing, virtualized network function, and service assurance to help accelerate open NFV adoption,” said Dr. PeiZhuan Qian, VP,  CertusNet. “We are pleased to be joining the OPNFV community and can’t wait to see where the project goes in the coming months.”

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 flexible 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

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Additional Resources
Getting Started with OPNFV
Joining the OPNFV Community
OPNFV Blog
OPNFV Events

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Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
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Open source software communities, service providers and network and technology vendors come together to deliver an industry-standard open source NFV platform

SAN FRANCISCO, June 4, 2015 — The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform to accelerate the introduction of new Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) products and services, today announced the availability of OPNFV Arno, the community’s first software release. Arno is aimed at anyone who is exploring NFV deployments, developing Virtual Network Functions (VNF) applications, or interested in NFV performance and use case-based testing. This developer-focused release provides an initial build of the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) components of ETSI NFV architecture.

In the eight months since launching, OPNFV has brought together more than 100 developers from network operators, solution providers and vendors who are collaborating to build the foundation for a flexible open source NFV platform by integrating and testing components from relevant upstream projects. The OPNFV community has quickly formed and built processes to work on 2 projects that span the range of requirements needed to build NFV solutions. The work is supported by 57 member companies who bring diverse perspectives and capabilities for addressing the industry’s need for a standard, open approach to deploying NFV platforms.

“Only eight months after its formation, OPNFV has met one of its major goals by creating an integrated build, deployment and testing environment that accelerates NFV implementation and interoperability,” said Prodip Sen, chairman of the OPNFV board of directors. “With Arno, we now have a solid foundation for testing some of the key resource orchestration and network control components for NFV. This is great a testament to the power of an open source collaborative model and the strength of the NFV ecosystem.”

“The increasing interest and demand for quicker adoption and implementation of NFV is the driving force behind the collaborative efforts of the OPNFV community,” said Chris Price, technical steering committee chair, OPNFV. “Arno is a major step in achieving these goals, implementing a congruent NFV platform for accelerated development and application deployment across the industry.”

Key capabilities of OPNFV Arno:

• Availability of baseline platform: Arno enables continuous integration, automated deployment and testing of components from upstream projects such as Ceph, KVM, OpenDaylight, OpenStack and Open vSwitch. It allows developers and users to automatically install and explore the platform.
• Ability to deploy and test various VNFs: End users and developers can deploy their own or third party VNFs on Arno to test its functionality and performance in various traffic scenarios and use cases.
• Availability of test infrastructure in community-hosted labs: Agile testing plays a crucial role in the OPNFV platform. With Arno, the project is unveiling a community test labs infrastructure where users can test the platform in different environments and on different hardware. This test labs infrastructure enables the platform to be exercised in different NFV scenarios to ensure that the various open source components come together to meet vendor and end user needs.
• Allows automatic continuous integration of specific components: As upstream projects are developed independently they require testing of various OPNFV use cases to ensure seamless integration and interworking within the platform. OPNFV’s automated toolchain allows continuous automatic builds and verification.

 

“Delivering Arno within eight months is a true testament to the benefits of an open source collaborative model,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “With Arno, end users can delve into the platform and begin testing use cases right away. Our goal for future releases is to continue enhancing the platform with new features that address specific real-world scenarios and carrier-grade requirements.”

 

Comments from OpenDaylight
“NFV has gone from idea to reality so quickly. I am hearing from every major operator their plans to deploy SDN and NFV and see the OPNFV project as playing a critical role in this vision becoming a reality. It’s great to see the OPNFV community has chosen OpenDaylight as a key component of their project and the Arno release,” said Neela Jacques, executive director, OpenDaylight.

Comments from OpenStack
“Delivering Arno in a short amount of time shows the potential of open source collaboration,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director, OpenStack Foundation. “The OpenStack community looks forward to working closely with OPNFV and accelerating the evolution of NFV.”

Comments from ETSI NFV ISG
“We are very happy to see the adoption of components of ETSI NFV architecture in Arno. This is a major milestone for OPNFV and the NFV ecosystem in building the integrated open source NFV platform. We congratulate the community and are looking forward to future releases,” said Dr. Steven Wright (AT&T), chairman of ETSI NFV ISG.

Information about Arno is available here: https://www.opnfv.org/arno.

Those who are interested in collaborating on OPNFV and shaping the future of networking can learn more here: https://www.opnfv.org/developers/how-participate .

About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)
Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform to accelerate the introduction of new NFV products and services. 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
Getting Started with OPNFV
Joining the OPNFV Community
OPNFV Blog
OPNFV Events

Media Inquires
Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
pr@opnfv.org