Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project Gains Industry Momentum with New Members and Significant Technical Progress

SAN FRANCISCO, June 8, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project today announced that Accenture, CertusNet, Coriant, Juniper Networks, Mavenir, Mirantis, PCCW Global, Red Hat, VEON and Windstream joined as new members to contribute to the open source framework for network automation.

Creating a sustainable ecosystem in support of ONAP will enable operators and vendors to foster innovation and avoid fragmentation of software-defined networks (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) platforms.

ONAP recently announced production-ready code and documentation and continues to make significant technical progress. The growing, vibrant technical ONAP community is working to deliver a neutral automation platform for network, infrastructure and services across service providers, cloud providers and enterprises in today's software-defined, virtualized era.

Nearly 200 developers, representing major telecom and networking organizations from around the world, met recently in May to map out ONAP's functional architecture. The group, which will meet again in June 8-9 in Beijing, began identifying project definitions and use cases like vCPE and VoLTE. Later this year, ONAP plans to release an architecture that seamlessly integrates open source ECOMP and the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O) to support the coming wave of 5G, IoT and cloud applications and services. 

"I'm incredibly pleased with the technical energy behind ONAP and the progress the community is making," said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking at The Linux Foundation. "The turnout at our first face-to-face developer gathering was amazing. With today's news, the ONAP braintrust continues to expand, representing more than 35 organizations from around the world. ONAP enables a new business model of faster innovation and is now an integral part of all major vendors in Networking Community."

Today's new members recognize that ONAP will disrupt the market, automating the network to deliver efficiencies and business agility to carriers and vendors alike. Current members include a broad mix of major vendors, service providers, system integrators and consultancies: Amdocs, ARM, AT&T, Bell Canada, BOCO Inter-Telecom, Canonical, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Ciena, Cisco, Cloudbase Solutions, Ericsson, GigaSpaces, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Metaswitch, Microsoft, H3C Technologies, Nokia, Open Networking Foundation, Orange, Raisecom, Reliance Jio, Tech Mahindra, VMware, Wind River and ZTE.

More about the newest members:

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions – underpinned by the world's largest delivery network – Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately 401,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Working with many global communication service providers, Accenture has vast expertise in building next-generation platforms and SDN/NFV-powered ecosystems, all of which will be beneficial to ONAP. 

CertusNet is a world-leading information platform and solution provider. As a pioneer and an advocate of Elastic Network and Elastic Services concepts, the company is committed to providing Elastic Network services covering carrier-grade SDN/NFV solutions, cloud computing, and end-to-end customer experience assurance for global users, enterprises and government agencies. CertusNet strives to continuously improve the user experience, facilitate new services and applications, and help customers generate greater value with its widely trusted Elastic Services. Already a member of OPNFV, by joining industry leaders in the ONAP project, CertusNet is stepping up its contribution to open networks and standards-based software development.

Coriant is a global supplier of SDN-enabled end-to-end packet optical networking and DCI solutions that enable network operators to cost-efficiently scale network capacity, reduce operational complexity, and create the resilient foundation for a new generation of mobile, video, and cloud services. The company is joining ONAP to help accelerate industry adoption of SDN and NFV capabilities that orchestrate and automate service delivery in cloud-centric, SDN-controlled networks.

Juniper Networks challenges the status quo with products, solutions and services that transform the economics of networking. Its team co-innovates with customers and partners to deliver automated, scalable and secure networks with agility, performance and value.

Mavenir accelerates and redefines mobile network transformation for Service Providers, by offering a comprehensive product portfolio across every layer of the network infrastructure stack. From 5G application/service layers to packet core and RAN – Mavenir leads the way in evolved, cloud-native networking solutions enabling innovative and secure experiences for end users. Through its industry first VoLTE, VoWiFi, Advanced Messaging (RCS), Multi ID, Visual Voicemail and Cloud RAN solutions, Mavenir's platform and mobile expertise will be an asset to the project as it develops cutting-edge use cases like IoT and 5G.

Mirantis delivers open cloud infrastructure to top enterprises using OpenStack, Kubernetes and related open source technologies. The company follows a build-operate-transfer model to deliver its Mirantis Cloud Platform and cloud management services, empowering customers to take advantage of open source innovation with no vendor lock-in. The company has built deep expertise in open source and orchestration in their work with OpenStack, which the company will leverage in their contributions to the ONAP community.

PCCW Global, the international operating division of HKT, Hong Kong's premier telecommunications service provider, which is majority-owned by PCCW Limited, adds to ONAP's significant member presence in Asia. Covering more than 3,000 cities and 150 countries, the PCCW Global network supports a portfolio of integrated global communications solutions which include Ethernet, IP, fiber and satellite transmission solutions, international voice and VoIPX services, managed network and security services and expanding "as-a-service" solutions including OTT video and Unified Communications. PCCW Global chose to be part of ONAP with the aim of providing a telco perspective to the organization and to collaborate with all members to expand its scope from a single domain to a multi-domain/carrier environment. This will help achieve operational scale and efficiency as well as ease interoperability.

Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to provide reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As a connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create innovative technologies designed to liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. The telecommunications industry is accelerating innovation and interoperability in the management and orchestration of NFV applications, and Red Hat is enthusiastic about helping to advance this industry trend.

VEON, a NASDAQ and Euronext Amsterdam listed global provider of communications services, formerly known as VimpelCom, aspires to lead the personal internet revolution for more than 235 million customers it serves today, and many others in the years to come. Headquartered in Amsterdam, VEON's business ties in Eurasia, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Italy expand ONAP's footprint across Europe and Asia.

Windstream Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: WIN), a FORTUNE 500 company, is a leading provider of advanced network communications and technology solutions for consumers, small businesses, enterprise organizations and carrier partners across the U.S. Windstream offers bundled services, including broadband, security solutions, voice and digital TV to consumers. The company also provides data, cloud solutions, unified communications and managed services to business and enterprise clients. The company supplies core transport solutions on a local and long-haul fiber-optic network spanning approximately 147,000 miles. Additional information is available at windstream.com and https://www.windstream.com/siteselector/. The company joins a number of telecommunication service providers already supporting ONAP.

All are invited to join the ONAP Technical Steering Committee to work on this shared framework for automation of virtual network functions.

Additional Resources

• Join the ONAP Technical Steering Committee
• Learn About ONAP Membership
• Access ONAP Code

About ONAP
The Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project brings together top global carriers and vendors with the goal of allowing end users to automate, design, orchestrate and manage services and virtual functions. ONAP unites two major open networking and orchestration projects, open source ECOMP and the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O), with the mission of creating a unified architecture and implementation and supporting collaboration across the open source community. The ONAP Project is a Linux Foundation project. For more information, visit https://www.onap.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
Sarah Conway
The Linux Foundation
[email protected]
978-578-5300

SOURCE ONAP

Related Links

http://www.onap.org/