Metaswitch Networks and Radisys have got together to offer Radisys’ virtualized Media Resource Function (vMRF) as a partner to  Metaswitch’s Clearwater virtual IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). Radisys’ vMRF is pre-integrated with OpenCloud’s Rhino Telecom Application server and Metaswitch will essentially resell it with Clearwater to offer carriers a complete IMS solution.

Leaving aside the welter of technical definitions and acronyms, the two companies are demonstrating an important aspect of the promise of NFV - that it allows disparate companies to mix and match software products on an open platform to the benefit of both customer telcos and infrastructure and software providers.

The companies claim that this means that, for the first time, mobile operators will be able to deploy a complete virtualized IMS which will support both legacy services - voice and SMS -  and new IP-based, multimedia services.

Project Clearwater was one of the first NFV implementations and was aimed at virtualizing what is really the telecoms “low hanging fruit” and therefore ripe for virtualisation - the IMS architecture itself, which has up to now been expensive to deploy.  

Metaswitch claims virtualisation radically re-engineers the headline cost of supporting a voice user, down to mere pennies per year.

“Mobile operators are embracing IMS as the foundation of their LTE networks so they can be flexible enough to provide a complete portfolio of immersive IP-based multimedia communications services,” the press release has Paul Drew, senior vice president, Metaswitch Networks saying. “As Metaswitch helps its customers continue down a path towards a software-centric, cloud-based, all-IP future, we are pleased to work with Radisys as they share our overall vision and have been a leading provider of IP Media Processing and MRF products for more than 10 years.”

“The shift to all-IP networks made possible by IMS is enabling communication service providers to become more software-centric, rethinking not only their network architecture, but also how they deliver profitable, differentiated services to their customers,” says Grant Henderson, vice president, MediaEngine and corporate marketing for Radisys - in the same press release.