SAN JOSE, Calif. — Open Networking Summit North America — April 3, 2019 — LF Networking (LFN), which facilitates collaboration and operational excellence across networking projects, today announced expansion of its OPNFV Verification Program (OVP) to include Virtual Network Function (VNF) compliance testing. The expanded OVP, created in conjunction with the ONAP testing community, now includes publicly-available VNF compliance test tooling based on requirements developed within ONAP, as well as a Verified Labs Program and the induction of the University of New Hampshire-Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) as the first OPNFV Verified Lab.

Initially developed to simplify validation testing of commercial NFVI/VIM products based on OPNFV, the expanded program now covers interoperability with ONAP-compliant on-boarding requirements using both Heat and TOSCA package validation. The first of its kind, OVP combines open source-based automated compliance and verification testing for multiple parts of the NFV stack specifications established by ONAP, multiple SDOs such as ETSI and GSMA, and the LF Networking End User Advisory Group (EUAG). Demonstrating the readiness and availability of commercial products based on these requirements improves time-to-market, reduces costs, and improves the overall quality of  NFVI and VNF deployments.

“Overcoming interoperability challenges has become a top industry priority as NFV and software defined networking (SDN) technologies truly power next-generation networks,”  said Heather Kirksey, vice president, Community and Ecosystem Development, the Linux Foundation. “OVP was created to address these challenges and ensure commercial NFVI and VNF products are ready for market. I am incredibly proud of the community for achieving this cross-project milestone and adding VNF testing to this community-led effort.”

OVP has also created a Verified Labs program to augment the current self-testing model, giving users the choice to test their products/services with these Verified labs or performing the testing in-house. Benefits of working with a Verified lab include access to subject matter experts, additional test infrastructure, and they enable ecosystem-wide scaling as the number of VNFs entering the market increases. This program is also overseen by the LFN Compliance and Verification Committee and passing labs receive a badge. UNH-IOL is the first lab to receive the OVP Verified Lab badge, and other labs active in the LFN communities are encouraged to submit an application.

“UNH-IOL has been active in the OPNFV community for several years now, including hosting an OPNFV plugfest in our facility and participating in the Dovetail Project and the Compliance and Verification Committee (CVC),” said Lincoln Lavoie, senior engineer, UNH-IOL. “We are thrilled to be the first official OPNFV Verified Lab and to help  build an NFV ecosystem of products and services using open source projects like OPNFV and ONAP.”

In addition to increased choice of interoperable components available to a service provider and greater ecosystem health, OVP provides specific benefits to both CSPs and vendors, including:

The program will continue to expand in the future focusing on end-to-end NFV system validation and to deepen the compliance testing of both VNF and NFVI components, based on end user deployment needs.  See here for a list of current OVP Verified NFVI products.

OVP has the opportunity to create immense value for the NFV/SDN  ecosystem; it is the only unified open source-based compliance and verification program for the industry, and the only program to truly create an interoperable disaggregated software stack spanning multi-vendor NFVI/VIM, MANO, and VNFs. As an open source project, however, it will not succeed without leadership and participation of the community and ecosystem itself. We encourage anyone interested in any aspect of the program — including testing their VNFs — to get involved. Details on the OPNFV Verified Program and how to get started are available here: https://www.lfnetworking.org/ovp.

Please also reference the  new white paper, “OVP: OPNFV Verification Program” available here.

“AT&T knows first-hand how critical VNF requirements are and the value of automation in the certification process,” said Chris Rice, chair of LFN Governing Board and senior vice president, AT&T Labs, Network Cloud and Infrastructure, AT&T.  “We see tremendous benefits in bringing quality services to market faster because of these efforts. We are excited with the progress of the LFN’s efforts to expand their OVP program to support greater VNF compliance with the ONAP platform. Driving further alignment, industry adoption, and increased automation will be a big win for customers, CSPs and VNF providers alike.”

“Establishing VNFs open ecosystem to enable related technology and service innovation is one
of the core forces driving operators to explore NFV network reconstruction. As a deep
participant and contributing member of LFN, China Mobile is very pleased to welcome the
OVP Program. In the latest development, the scope of commercial product certification testing is
extended to VNF-oriented scenarios,” said Dr. Feng Junlan, chief scientist of China Mobile Research Institute, general manager of Artificial Intelligence and Smart Operation R&D Center,  and vice chairman of LFN Board of Directors. “We will also continue working with our Industry partners to invest in relevant open source projects in moving forward together.”

“No one vendor can manage the cost of interoperability testing upfront in today’s ecosystem. That’s why it must be a collective effort and that’s also why we need to standardise the telco cloud, two results that open source communities, by their inherent principles of openness,  are able to bring,” said Jehanne Savi, executive leader of the All-IP and On-demand Networks Programs, Orange.

“Procurement and Introduction of VNFs into our network should be as simple and efficient as it is for Inducting an application in the Cloud, with this we will be able to deliver our services to our customers in a much more agile way and thereby introduce newer services faster. We believe OVP program can provide the much needed standardization for certification of VNFs to this account. This will benefit customers, carriers and VNF providers alike, making it easier also for VNF innovators to bring new solutions to market,” said Matt Beal, Vodafone Group Technology Director, Strategy & Architecture.

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