The Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project has announced that Comcast, Fujitsu, Infosys, Netcracker Technology, and Samsung joined as new members. The open source framework project for global network automation also detailed progress on several major initiatives.
Earlier this year, the Linux Foundation announced the merger of open source ECOMP and Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O) to create the ONAP (see "Open Source ECOMP, OPEN-O merge to form ONAP Project"). The growing ONAP community says it intends to provide a neutral automation platform for network, infrastructure, and services across service providers, cloud providers, and enterprises facing the challenges of providing competitive on-demand competitive services, while leveraging existing investments. According to ONAP's website, recognition of the global potential to transform and automate networks with software-defined networking/network functions virtualization (SDN/NFV) has enabled the project to double its members roster, community participants, and projects to more than 900 contributors, 50 members, and 30 projects only six months after launching.
The ONAP technical community met this week regarding the acceleration of Amsterdam, the first ONAP release to integrate the original OPEN-O and ECOMP code bases into a common orchestration platform. Members plan to meet outside of Paris in September and release Amsterdam later this year.
The ONAP community also is working toward several projects and technologies that combine features from both the OPEN-O and ECOMP platform and are important to VNF orchestration. Among these are guidelines and tools designed to enable vendors to create, integrate, and validate their VNFs with ONAP.
ONAP has also announced the acceptance of the VNF Validation Program (ICE) Project as part of its efforts. Developed at the AT&T Foundry, and recently incorporated into ONAP by TSC, ICE is an incubation and validation platform for VNF's that includes a defined validation process and scripts that form the basis of the certification and self-test programs for ONAP. The VNF Validation Program (ICE) Project, along with the VNF Requirements Project and the VNF SDK Project, will define how VNFs can obtain an ONAP Compatible Label. Other areas of integration include service orchestration, deployment and monitoring of VNFs, and closed loop automation.
"We're excited to add new geographic and industry perspectives to ONAP and incredibly impressed with the progress the technical community is making with the first release," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking at the Linux Foundation. "Our growth in the past few months alone proves telecommunications, cable/cloud operators and solution providers believe there is a clear need for a common platform for rapidly designing, implementing and managing differentiated services with meaningful cost savings."
The project's website indicates that more than 10 global mobile service operators representing 43 percent of the worldwide mobile market plan to use ONAP.
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