Common NFVI Telco Taskforce publishes first reference model and architecture

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The Common NFVI Telco Taskforce (CNTT) has reached its first major milestone with the publication of an initial common reference model and first reference architecture.

Jointly hosted by the GSMA and the Linux Foundation, CNTT operates as an open, operator-led committee responsible for creating and documenting an industry-aligned Common NFVI Framework.

Through developing this common framework and approach, the group aims to accelerate adoption and deployment of network functions virtualisation (NFV) by making virtualised network functions (VNFs) faster and cheaper deploy, enabling telcos to launch new digital services faster.

The CNTT group is creating a suite of tangible specifications to be hosted by the GSMA, and code to be created and hosted within OPNFV.  

Markus Wuepping, Head of Cloud Center of Excellence, Vodafone Group, said, “The CNTT, empowered by an industry-driven compliance and certification programme, means less need for internal testing of VNFs before onboarding them into our network and hence allowing us to introduce new services to our customers faster.”

Collaboration

The taskforce was formed earlier this year and held its first meeting in July.

“This initial release represents the first tangible output of CNTT,” said Heather Kirksey, vice president, Community and Ecosystem Development, the Linux Foundation. “We have also initiated significant discussion around reference implementation along with commencement of enhancements to OVP within OPNFV. 

“I am very pleased to see the focused delivery of this group and our ability to align the industry and accelerate innovation, especially in the advance of 5G. It’s incredible to witness such deep collaboration and integration among operators and vendors from across the globe.”

The preliminary documentation is available in CNTT’s GitHub repository.

Next steps

CNTT will now continue to further refine its reference model and its first reference architecture based on Openstack, and expand its portfolio of reference architectures with a focus on areas such as containerisation, Kubernetes-based cloud-native stacks and container-based network functions’ validation requirements, along with growing its capabilities surrounding compliance and verification testing, and providing a lifecycle approach for NFVI.

Stéphane Demartis, VP Cloud Infrastructure Solutions and Services, Orange, said, “Specifying reference NFV infrastructure benefits all parties in the integration chain. We are very pleased the industry at large is now recognising the benefit and is embarking into the CNTT initiative. Progress since ONS Europe last year has been tremendous.”