Ericsson has made an announcement regarding a multi-vendor NFV solution through Ericsson’s open NFV platform. The solution was successfully launched for the commercial network of NTT DOCOMO, INC. on Wednesday, 9 March. The launch is indicative of the first commercial deployment of its kind.
The new platform offers interoperability and connectivity with any carrier class virtualised network function and SDN. The solution is based on an open architecture and has the OpenStack-based Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment as the virtualisation platform and the NFV orchestrator, Ericsson Cloud Manager. It also has system integration and support services provided by Ericsson. The solution can support a multi-vendor virtual EPC deployment as well. The open NFV platform is capable of running any network function from Ericsson and third parties. It offers superior levels of performance, reliability, operation, and maintenance capabilities. It also permits NTT DOCOMO to speed up the delivery of new services over a stable and interoperable network.
According to Seizo Onoe, executive vice president and chief technology officer at NTT DOCOMO, “DOCOMO has again demonstrated its technology leadership by the launch of multi-vendor NFV. I am extremely excited to see this progress to provide better services based on standardised future-proof architecture.”
The establishment of a strong partnership between NTT DOCOMO and Ericsson allows both companies to closely collaborate in driving global standardisations and vital industry interoperability in OPNFV, ETSI NFV and 3GPP.
