Continuing in its mission to enable fast network virtualization for operators and service providers, OneAccess Networks unveils the Open Virtualization Platform (OVP), a Linux-based middleware platform that enables operators to perform full lifecycle management of OneAccess’ own virtualized network functions (VNFs), together with those from other vendors across the industry.
The open-source, vendor-agnostic and fully abstracted software design of OVP enables operators to resist hardware vendor lock-in and also keep their deployment options open for the future, by providing the management flexibility operators need to accelerate their go-to-market strategies.
Pravin Mirchandani, CMO, OneAccess Networks, comments: “Our operator customers are looking for a genuinely open and portable VNF management solution which enables them to adapt their NFV architecture post-deployment. They are also looking to make processing efficiencies; VNFs are compute-heavy, which will necessarily impact their choice of white-box specification and, as a result, the overall cost of deployment. Finally, they want a user-friendly environment which is capable of hosting, chaining and managing VNFs from different vendors. This is important because it helps them to stay in control of their migration; they can combine best-of-breed VNFs and resist becoming locked into individual vendor relationships. These requirements have shaped the development of our management platform, OVP, which we’re delighted to unveil today.”
OneAccess has also developed a drag’n’drop GUI for its management environment, bringing together the NETCONF, SNMP and CLI APIs in a single VNF management interface, which accelerates service design and dramatically reduces integration complexity. It also offers network admins a great user experience when interconnecting, testing and troubleshooting the new functions.
“Our objective is to democratize NFV by delivering cost effective, NETCONF-enabled CPE solutions that allow operators to deploy virtualized services today,” adds Antoine Clerget, CTO, OneAccess. “The market is challenged by operators’ needs to continue their support for legacy connections while also starting to generate returns on their investment in NFV. Achieving both requires a pragmatic and flexible approach that enables operators to stay in control of their migration. OVP’s open architecture supports this ethos wholeheartedly.”
Operators can realise additional benefits by bundling OVP with OneAccess’ own range of white-box CPEs and VNF catalog. By utilising the ‘full stack’ of OneAccess technologies, operators can make significant savings through the smart sharing of compute resources. For instance, OneAccess’ vRouter VNF can be integrated with OVP in a single appliance, which typically frees up an additional core to support an additional VNF. OVP can also take advantage of open source compute acceleration mechanisms supported by OneAccess’ white-box CPEs, such as DPDK and SR-IOV.