ADVA Optical Networking Joins OPNFV to Help Drive Network Functions Virtualization

ADVA Optical Networking announced today that it has officially joined the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV). As a member of the OPNFV, ADVA Optical Networking will play a key role in helping to shape the community’s discussions and focus. Established in September 2014, the OPNFV is an open source project aimed at accelerating the development and adoption of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). The OPNFV’s community is composed of a broad range of service providers, hardware manufacturers and software vendors, including AT&T, IBM and Juniper Networks. Together the community is developing an integrated open source platform that can be used to build NFV functionality.

“NFV presents the industry with an incredible opportunity; an opportunity to simplify network infrastructure, an opportunity to rapidly respond to networking needs. But we’re only at the start of this journey,” said Christoph Glingener, CTO, ADVA Optical Networking. “What’s key in such an early stage of a technology’s development is that the supporting community moves forward together. The transition from vendor-specific, monolithic networks to open architecture requires clear collaboration and communication throughout the entire ecosystem. It’s critical that there are no silos, no fragments. That’s why we’re part of the OPNFV. We believe in working together to develop open source platforms that can help the entire community. With such a collaborative approach we’ll move forward quicker and with greater success.”

ADVA Optical Networking’s OPNFV membership is the latest in a series of NFV-focused announcements that showcase the company’s commitment to the technology. In addition to a number of demonstrations that showed how NFV could be used to develop virtual customer premise equipment solutions and virtualized radio access backhaul networks, ADVA Optical Networking also recently revealed its long-term NFV strategy. This strategy is focused on the expansion of its best-in-breed ADVA FSP 150 Carrier Ethernet portfolio and will include a number of new Network Interface Devices (NIDs). These new NIDs will become a vital aspect of the OPNFV’s activities as it seeks to fully highlight the benefits of true NFV-centric networks.

“Communication service providers are eager to benefit from speed of innovation, cost efficiency and flexibility of NFV based on carrier-grade, integrated, open-source platforms. Various open source components have emerged from the work of different standards developing organizations (SDOs) and focusing on the consistency, performance and interoperability is key to the success of NFV,” commented Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “We’re excited to have ADVA Optical Networking bring their expertise in building VNF infrastructures (NFVI) and its commitment to open-source for orchestrating NFV infrastructures, to our community. We look forward to their contributions in assuring a seamless integration of NFVI in OPNFV.”

“What’s critical about the OPNFV is its openness, its deep-rooted sense of community. It shares our values here. It understands that NFV’s true potential can only be achieved if the industry works collectively,” commented Stephan Rettenberger, VP, marketing, ADVA Optical Networking. “Our membership of the OPNFV is a clear signal to our customers, to our partners and to the wider industry that we believe in open collaboration, in transparency. We’ve displayed this already with our NFV demos at Mobile World Congress and MPLS SDN World Congress. The key question is how do we move forward together? We’re going to be working closely with our partners at OPNFV to answer this question and ensure that NFV continues to advance.”