AT&T plans to launch ECOMP into the open source community by Q1 2017

AT&T is hopeful that it can launch its Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) virtualization platform into the open source community during the first quarter of 2017.

The telco said that this will further its goal to make ECOMP the telecom industry's standard automation platform for managing virtual network functions and other software-centric network capabilities.

Chris Rice, SVP of AT&T Labs Domain 2.0 architecture and design, said in a blog post that by launching ECOMP into open source, “community members can use and contribute to the evolution of this software platform.”

AT&T is making progress in this direction. Earlier this year, AT&T announced that it is open sourcing ECOMP to Linux Foundation. Ultimately, AT&T plans to release all 8.5 million lines of code for ECOMP -- a platform the company developed internally over the past few years.

“Our goal in open sourcing ECOMP is to harmonize the industry, creating a common approach to the entire VNF/SDN lifecycle process within an SDN-based network cloud,” Rice said. “We think that open sourcing within the Linux Foundation gives us the best chance to achieve this.”

As it releases ECOMP into the broader telecom community, another key focus is to enable other service providers to take advantage of the platform. Orange is the first service provider to join AT&T’s ECOMP effort.

The two service providers reached an agreement to collaborate on new open source activities related to SDN and NFV, aiming at developing new standards carriers can follow as they implement virtualization in their networks.

“We are also in discussion with a number of service providers to join our ECOMP ecosystem, and Orange is one of them,” Rice said. “The global operator is supporting ECOMP through some early testing and trial work.”

ECOMP is part of AT&T's efforts to virtualize its network operations as the carrier moves into an SDN architecture. According to AT&T, ECOMP enables the automation of service delivery, service assurance, performance management, fault management and SDN tasks. 

The telco has set a wider goal of virtualizing 75 percent of its network by 2020. The company made progress toward that goal last year by virtualizing 5.7 percent of its network, and this year the company hopes to migrate 30 percent of its applications into a private cloud by the end of 2016.

For more:
- see this blog post

Related articles:
AT&T’s ECOMP platform being tested by Orange
AT&T open sources ECOMP to Linux Foundation, hopes to make it industry's standard for SDN
AT&T names Amdocs as systems integrator for its ECOMP virtual platform