Industry partners commit to NFV interoperability testing initiative

• To further enhance Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) industrialization and support the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) project, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia signed Memorandum of Understanding to create the NFV Interoperability Testing Initiative (NFV-ITI).
• The main objective of NFV-ITI is to promote competition and create industry alignment on generic principles for NFV interoperability testing and support for specific customer situations.
• NFV-ITI will address NFV multi-vendor interoperability challenges for communication service providers, enabling them to optimize NFV deployment and integration costs, and reduce time-to-market for new services.

Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia today announced they have signed a MoU to create the NFV Interoperability Testing Initiative (NFV-ITI) that will help communication service providers to address the challenges related to NFV deployment and Cloud transformation within multi-vendor network environments.

The deployment and integration of virtual network functions within today’s multi-vendor environments can introduce new interoperability challenges. To address these challenges, NFV-ITI members will cooperatively support the interoperability of NFV elements in specific customer situations to accelerate the commercial implementations, and to reduce the time-to-market for new applications and services.

All the existing NFV interoperability related testing activities have been triggered by different needs of the industry, including the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) NFV Testing WG, OPNFV testing projects, Network Vendor Interoperability Testing (NVIOT) testing, and the New IP Agency (NIA) interoperability testing.

Complementing all the existing NFV interoperability testing activities in the industry, NFV-ITI will focus on testing interoperability configurations of commercial NFV solutions actually used in the communication service providers’ networks. It will recommend generic principles, including interoperability test cases, test criteria, processes, methods, guidelines, templates, and testing tools, and will also apply best practices from all existing interoperability testing activities in the industry, such as the NVIOT forum efforts. NFV-ITI shall be well-aligned with the ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group and the OPNFV project.

Charles Stucki, vice president and general manager, NFV Business Unit, Service Provider Business, Cisco, said: "Cisco is focused on driving solutions for an open network architecture, helping our service provider customers speed technology adoption and time to market. NFV-ITI will foster collaboration and open-ness by bringing top vendors together to explore new possibilities for interoperability, and determine the best technology strategies for our customers to achieve their business goals"

Martin Bäckström, vice president, Group Function Strategy & Technology, Ericsson, said: "Through SDN, NFV, and Cloud technologies, Ericsson enables more flexible and scalable networks that bring innovative services to customers faster than ever before. By driving industry alignments on interoperability testing in specific commercial deployments, NFV-ITI will accelerate industrialization of NFV and help to create an even stronger ecosystem that benefits operators, customers and vendors everywhere"

Long Jiping, vice president, R&D, Business Unit Cloud Core Network, Huawei, said: "Cloud transformation has been the prevailing trend with carrier networks. Huawei is dedicated to promoting cloud transformation and helping carriers to construct an efficient, agile, and cloud-based network, by providing fully cloudified products and solutions as well as an open and collaborative ecosystem. NFV-ITI is an important step towards cooperation between vendors and will address multi-vendor NFV interoperability challenges. We hope additional vendors in this field can join us to create this mutually beneficial industry"

Ron Haberman, vice president, CloudBand, Nokia, said: "Supporting the creation of the NFV-ITI is another step towards ensuring service providers can smoothly migrate to cloud networks within today’s multi-vendor environment.While the network model is changing with NFV, the need for true carrier-grade performance remains paramount. Ensuring the integration, automation and interoperability of robust, well-architected virtualization solutions is critical to the performance, scalability, resiliency and manageability our customers demand"

The general guiding principles for NFV-ITI are openness, fairness, reasonableness and non-discriminatory treatment. All relevant NFV vendors are welcome to join this initiative by ratifying the NFV-ITI MoU. 

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About Ericsson

Ericsson is the driving force behind the Networked Society - a world leader in communications technology and services. Our long-term relationships with every major telecom operator in the world allow people, business and society to fulfill their potential and create a more sustainable future.

Our services, software and infrastructure - especially in mobility, broadband and the cloud - are enabling the telecom industry and other sectors to do better business, increase efficiency, improve the user experience and capture new opportunities.

With approximately 115,000 professionals and customers in 180 countries, we combine global scale with technology and services leadership. We support networks that connect more than 2.5 billion subscribers. Forty percent of the world’s mobile traffic is carried over Ericsson networks. And our investments in research and development ensure that our solutions - and our customers - stay in front.

Founded in 1876, Ericsson has its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. Net sales in2015 were SEK 246.9 billion (USD 29.4 billion). Ericsson is listed on NASDAQ OMX stock exchange in Stockholm and the NASDAQ in New York.
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About Huawei

Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. Driven by responsible operations, ongoing innovation, and open collaboration, we have established a competitive ICT portfolio of end-to-end solutions in telecom and enterprise networks, devices, and cloud computing. Our ICT solutions, products, and services are used in more than 170 countries and regions, serving over one-third of the world’s population. With more than 170,000 employees, Huawei is committed to enabling the future information society, and building a Better Connected World.
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About Nokia

Nokia is a global leader in creating the technologies at the heart of our connected world. Powered by the research and innovation of Nokia Bell Labs, we serve communications service providers, governments, large enterprises and consumers, with the industry’s most complete, end-to-end portfolio of products, services and licensing.

From the enabling infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of Things, to emerging applications in virtual reality and digital health, we are shaping the future of technology to transform the human experience. www.nokia.com