Atos has developed a multivendor alliance with Dell EMC, Intel, Juniper Networks, Red Hat and VMware, aiming to accelerate network functions virtualization (NFV) deployments in service provider networks.
The company said it created the alliance to address the business challenges that service providers face today in migrating their networks from a traditional physical model to a virtual environment. The alliance is focused on enabling service providers to achieve three key benefits: reduced capex, reduced opex, and increased business agility.
Alliance members have designed and built an architecture that uses commercial off-the-shelf products that Atos said can be rapidly and effectively deployed as NFV infrastructure. Atos and its partners are working to resolve integration challenges for “day 1” installations and to reduce the ongoing costs of maintaining a multivendor platform as new releases of hardware and software are made available.
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“As with cloud services five years ago, today we see a similar caution to accelerate the move to NFV and strongly believe we can successfully address our clients’ concerns and accelerate their journey,” said Paul Davey, CTO of global telecoms industry for Atos, in a release. “Our aim is to support operator clients in making a seamless transition from traditional infrastructure to virtual infrastructure without loss of service, reputation or revenue.
The Atos NFV alliance will work with multiple Virtual Network Function providers to understand and optimize network and business performance based on known and measured performance. The new alliance has also launched a multivendor NFV laboratory initiative focused on fostering a DevOps environment that it says is designed to simulate real-world scenarios and situations. This helps clients understand how this platform will perform in both VMware and OpenStack environments. The optimized architecture can deliver in excess of 60% total cost of ownership reduction over a three- to five-year period alongside the organizational and operational changes.
Located in Grenoble, France, the new carrier-grade NFV Laboratory, which was developed by Atos and its partners, will manage the consortia of telecommunications ecosystem partners and operate and maintain the NFV Laboratory. Atos and partners are establishing a joint team to identify and pursue targeted market and client opportunities, leveraging the NFV Laboratory to help accelerate wider adoption of these mission-critical NFV services.
Additionally, these companies are creating a “go-to-market” program and team to jointly pursue new client opportunities for NFV-enabled business transformation, each bringing their own expertise.
The NFV Laboratory focuses on testing, validating and demonstrating mission-critical NFV services in the context of specific programs of clients in both the fixed and mobile carrier markets.
Atos’ program is just one of several steps that the industry is taking to ensure NFV interoperability and prove out how elements of virtualization can work in real-world networks. ETSI plans to hold its second event in January, giving participants the opportunity to demonstrate system and service interoperability, for example. The group will be joined by open source communities include ETSI OSM (Open Source MANO), OPNFV, OpenStack and Open Baton.