ADVA creates NFV Ensemble division from ashes of Overture acquisition

ADVA Optical Networking is advancing its NFV (network functions virtualization) vision by creating a unit called Ensemble, leveraging the capabilities it gained from its recent acquisition of Overture Networks.

Led by the trio of James Buchanan as general manager, Prayson Pate, Overture co-founder, as CTO, and Chris Swan as head of business development, the division combines ADVA's software engineering capabilities and Overture's NFV portfolio.

The management team will be supported by a global team of NFV developers and engineers.      

Service providers, which will be able to get a choice of hardware platforms, software vendors and deployment locations, will be able to kick the tires of the ADVA Ensemble product suite at next week's Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona.

ADVA's acquisition of Overture was important in being able to advance NFV for the provider.

Prior to being purchased by ADVA, Overture was developing software around NFV and SDN (software defined networking) to serve its base of Ethernet service provider customers. ADVA can now use that software in products for its customers that want to virtualize more functions in their networks. 

ADVA had been focusing on virtualizing the NID (network interface device) function, "but Overture focused on different things like the orchestration layer, virtual NID and virtual aggregation and white box and built a great ecosystem," said Brian Protiva, CEO of ADVA, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "When we looked at it we said this is complementary and whether the industry goes with standard Ethernet or NFV we feel like we're well prepared for either path or any combination thereof."

ADVA said that the Ensemble division will enable service providers to deploy functions that leverage SDN and NFV at the metro service edge, in the data center and in the cloud. Further, by enabling automation, open APIs and orchestration into the metro service edge, ADVA said its Ensemble products will accelerate enable a new generation of on-demand, application-aware services.

Given the fact that deploying NFV is a complex process with various moving parts, ADVA is touting that the Ensemble division will give customers the option to select "best-of-breed elements" of its portfolio or integrate end-to-end solutions that fit their particular deployment needs.

The Ensemble division will also complement its FSP 150 platform programmable NFV-ready hardware that's already deployed with a number of large service providers.

For more:
- see the release

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