What are the NFV Open Lab’s goals, and how will they be accomplished?
The lab’s scope and goals include: multi-vendor NFV infrastructure integration and verification; multi-vendor NFV Services (VNFs), and E2E services integration; develop and share NFV best practices for consulting and service integration; project replication for strategic customers; provide a support platform for key OPNFV projects; and advance research for open integration and NFV deployment.
How does the NFV Open Lab assist and/or complement existing NFV efforts around the world?
The NFV Open Lab will interconnect with Huawei's global labs to share resources/capabilities and build an innovation center for network ICT transformation. The open lab will work with partners to build the open and cooperative NFV ecological chain. The open lab offers several advantages. For example, its E-lab assures a superior experience of remote access and testing anytime and anywhere through all terminals such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers.
Also, the sharing of Huawei's global labs resources enables cross-domain joint tests, leading technology studies, commercial deployments, support for digital service transformation and IT strategy implementation. Customers can gain use case experience based on actual service scenarios. And the test verification process and system is based on the NFV architecture defined by ETSI and OPNFV to ensure compliance for technologies and services.
How can telco services evolve seamlessly evolution to NFV?
Services migration needs a prime system integrator (PSI) who has rich experience with top design, and can pre-integrate and verify the equipment, systems and business from multiple vendors to guarantee high system availability. And before migration, the PSI also need to evaluate the current network, prepare a redundancy plan, and do pre-cutover and verification. All this work requires good cooperation with the operator, and the PSI need to be familiar with the operator’s current network, process, business and emergency handling program.
So for NFV transformation, how should operators choose and evaluate the capability of the PSI?
The PSI must have the capacity of top design, the ability to combine the CT business platform and IT equipment platform together, and provide services including consultant, design, planning, integration, verification etc. So since now we strongly suggest CT vendors to act as PSI, since they have the necessary experience to migrate the business smoothly to the NFV platform, minimize the impact on current subscribers, and design a flexible network. Meanwhile, CT vendors are transforming into ICT convergence vendors, so we have confidence to select them as a PSI.
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