Over Half of Telecom Professionals Surveyed say OPNFV is Poised to Help Accelerate Adoption of Network Functions Virtualization
SAN FRANCISCO, OPNFV Summit, November 11, 2015 – The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced the results of a global survey commissioned by Heavy Reading to understand vendor and telecommunication professionals’ perceptions of OPNFV and how the project can help accelerate NFV transformation. After just one year, the data indicated the majority (86 percent) of telecommunication professionals surveyed either strongly or somewhat agree that OPNFV will accelerate the adoption of NFV in the industry overall.
“I’m delighted to see that the industry believes in the importance of what we’re doing,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “Our collaborative efforts to create an integrated, tested and open platform to drive NFV adoption are still in their infancy, but the results of this survey indicate we’re on the right path. It’s important we get a pulse on what the industry needs so we can refine our approach, and focus our efforts on what will best help us accelerate the transformation of open source NFV.”
Designed to gauge market perceptions of the OPNFV project and its role in shaping open source NFV, the survey provides a baseline of how the industry views the project’s impact. The data from telecommunication and vendor professionals looks at the drivers, barriers, timelines and critical upstream integration needed for OPNFV to succeed in advancing open source NFV adoption.
Key findings include:
- OPNFV is poised to accelerate NFV adoption overall. When asked about the benefits of the project, over half of telecom professionals surveyed said that OPNFV is poised to accelerate adoption of NFV, while more than 62 percent said it would lead to more rapid development. Similarly, ‘easier integration’ was cited as the number one benefit of OPNFV, at 74 percent.
- Swimming upstream is very important to OPNFV’s success. The majority (68 percent) of respondents cited upstream open source project OpenStack as very important to the success of OPNFV, while close to half cited additional projects including OpenvSwitch (47 percent), Carrier Grade Linux (42 percent), OpenDaylight (40 percent), and KVM (37 percent).
- NFV deployments are still young. 26 percent of respondents are in the testing/proof-of-concept phase of their NFV deployment while as many as 19 percent of indicated their organizations are in full NFV deployment. Nearly 60 percent are actively exploring NFV with 33 percent developing their NFV strategy already.
- Key success criteria include security, VNF interoperability as well as management and orchestration. Telcos and vendors cited a handful of technologies—including security, VNF interoperability, management and orchestration, OSS/BSS integration, skills training and containers—as the technologies most important to the success of OPNFV.
The survey results, which include input from over 200 telco and service provider professionals across North America, Europe and Asia, were shared on-stage during the first annual OPNFV Summit, which brings together innovators, developers and end users who are committed to advancing the creation of an open source framework for NFV. More details on the survey results are available here.
Project Announces CENGN as First Associate Member
Also announced during the Summit, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN) joined OPNFV as the first Associate member. Open to academic and nonprofit organizations that are passionate about helping to accelerate open source NFV, Associate membership requires significant technical contributions to the project.
CENGN is a consortium of industry, academic and research leaders dedicated to accelerating the commercialization of next-generation communications solutions. CENGN’s internationally recognized testing centre employs interoperability between multiple software and hardware products. Their state-of-the-art physical and virtual multi-vendor, test, certification and validation platform provides a unique environment to commercialize advanced products, applications and services.
“CENGN is very happy to join OPNFV as the first Associate Member,” said Ritch Dusome, President and CEO of Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next-Generation Networks (CENGN). “Our team has followed the development of OPNFV and its activities for more than a year now, and we believe it is on track to make a significant impact in the SDN and NFV environment. We look forward to contributing to OPNFV and its objectives, and adding value to its growing membership. Building on our strengths, CENGN will investigate new features, functions and deployable OPNFV releases that can be integrated into our industry-led Proof-of-Concept projects. In addition, CENGN will further contribute to the OPNFV community by adding a Pharos CI Lab in our Data Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.”
About Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)
Open Platform for NFV is a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using NFV. It brings together service providers, vendors and users to collaborate in an open forum on advancing the state-of-the-art in NFV. For more information, please visit: http://www.opnfv.org.
OPNFV is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. www.linuxfoundation.org
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Jill Lovato
OPNFV Project
pr@opnfv.org