AT&T and Orange Business Services inked an agreement to collaborate on open source and standardization initiatives that they say will accelerate standardization of software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies.
“Everyone benefits when network services and functions are designed around a common ecosystem that is delivered on open platforms. Innovation can happen faster and more easily, and this model will also help improve reliability and security,” Didier Duriez, SVP, global solutions at Orange Business Services, says.
AT&T and Orange used a statement to say they’ll look to identify appropriate forums for industry standardization discussions to drive standardization efforts forward.
“Building SDN and NFV technologies on common, open and interoperable standards will help solve today’s challenges by delivering highly secure, intelligent, application-aware networking,” the statement reads. “This benefits both network service providers and business customers by enabling them to deploy services faster, customize their infrastructures in near real-time, and innovate more easily within an ecosystem of interoperable service and equipment providers.”
The two companies say they will concentrate on the following areas:
- Make customer premises equipment and services truly universal by creating common specifications for premise-based devices, allowing them to work in different NSP environments and with different network function software providers.
- Streamline the onboarding process for virtual network functions (VNFs) by introducing common guidelines and templates that will mature the VNF provider ecosystem and make VNFs more plug and play.
- Develop standardized APIs that will enable SDN architectures from different service providers to interoperate with each other.
“We’re committed to defining a framework that will accelerate the adoption of SDN. Driving the industry toward a standardized approach will reduce the cost and complexity created by proprietary implementation of equipment in the network and on the customer premise,” Roman Pacewicz, SVP, offer management and service integration at AT&T Business Solutions, says.
