Windstream, Accenture, Juniper, Red Hat among ONAP’s new members

Several more prominent members of the communications industry have joined the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project, which is leading a swelling parade toward a harmonized approach to software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV).

Like existing members, the new participants in ONAP are a mix of vendors and service providers, including Accenture, CertusNet, Coriant, Juniper Networks, Mavenir, Mirantis, PCCW Global, Red Hat, VEON and Windstream. Some of the existing members include Amdocs, AT&T (which originated E-COMP), Bell Canada, China Mobile, China Telecom, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Orange, VMware and ZTE.

ONAP is the result of the merger earlier this year of ECOMP and the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O) under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. Through its efforts to develop a common open source framework for network automation, ONAP is becoming one of the key vehicles for minimizing the fragmentation within the SDN market.

ONAP’s efforts include an ongoing project to merge code contributed by ECOMP and OPEN-O. The organization recently announced production-ready code and documentation and the organization asserts that it continues to make significant technical progress.

Related: AT&T’s Rice: ONAP will help the industry take advantage of ECOMP and Open-O

The next item on ONAP’s agenda is to identify project definitions and uses cases—examples the organization offered were vCPE and VoLTE. Members are meeting today and tomorrow in Beijing to start that phase of the project.

A sobering amount of work is yet to be done to create a unified, open-source, virtualized network environment. During the meeting, the members are set to review dozens of proposed projects.

A sample includes:

  • An AT&T proposal for a control loop automation management platform (CLAMP), described as a means for designing and managing control loops
  • A proposal from China Mobile for a virtual function controller (VF-C) that will rely on ETSI’s specification for NFV MANO (management and organization)
  • A proposal for an ONAP operations manager.

That last proposal overseen by Bell Canada, is indicative of how much nitty-gritty work is yet to be done. According to the description, it “introduces the ONAP Platform OOM (ONAP Operations Manager) to efficiently Deploy, Manage, Operate the ONAP platform and its components (e.g. MSO, DCAE, SDC, etc.) and infrastructure (VMs, Containers). The OOM addresses the current lack of consistent platform-wide method in managing software components, their health, resiliency and other lifecycle management functions.”

Later this year, the organization said it plans to release an architecture that seamlessly integrates open source ECOMP and the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O) to support impending 5G, IoT and cloud applications and services.

“I’m incredibly pleased with the technical energy behind ONAP and the progress the community is making,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking at The Linux Foundation, in a statement. “With today’s news, the ONAP braintrust continues to expand, representing more than 35 organizations from around the world.”