Joins hands with SDN/NFV industry leaders to form the first product independent global industry platform

Hyderabad – November 2, 2016: Tech Mahindra, a leading consulting, business engineering and integration company and a specialist in digital transformation, networks and operations for the communications industry today launched its Virtual Network Function (VNF) Exchange, along with a number of leading new age providers of Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) products.

As the first product independent global industry platform, Tech Mahindra’s VNF Exchange is aimed at pre-certifying VNF design, VNF stack and VNF performance. It is designed to enable Communication Service Providers and vendors to rapidly achieve:

• VNF design certification based on the communications service providers’ network design
• VNF stack pre-certification providing full NFV stack certification for VNFs including underlying hardware, hypervisors, OS, VNF, and Management and Orchestration (MANO)
• VNF benchmarking

Service Providers and enterprises can now choose from an end-to-end ecosystem of products suiting their use cases and solutions from the VNF Exchange and use Tech Mahindra’s services ranging from Consulting Services to System Integration.

Tech Mahindra is pleased to have key industry leaders join us for the launch of our VNF Exchange including Affirmed Networks, Intel, Oracle, Red Hat, RIFT.io.

Speaking at the Tech Mahindra Network Services Conclave in San Francisco, Manish Vyas, President, Communications Business, Tech Mahindra said “To profitably meet the growing demands on their networks, service providers across the globe are launching strategic network transformation initiatives. As an example, AT&T’s stated goal under their Domain 2.0 initiative is to virtualize and control 75 percent of their network by 2020. In order to achieve such goals, it is essential that we accelerate the network transformation rate. Our VNF-Exchange is geared to do just that. With pre-certified solutions, it will speed up the rollouts of SDN and NFV solutions.”

VNF Exchange through pre-certification can enable Service Providers to achieve higher levels of innovation and simultaneously lower the entry barrier for NFV vendors. The formation of the VNF Exchange further adds to Tech Mahindra’s unique Run, Change, and Grow (RCG) Network Services offerings that enable communication service providers to transform and modernize their networks faster.

The VNF Exchange is ideally suited for Communication Service Providers who want to reap the benefit of improved CapEx, OpEx and Agility of SDN and NFV as it speeds up their network transformation. It mitigates risk by providing a portfolio of end-to-end partner products proven to work together along with indicative performance benchmarking. Adoption of new technology can demand significant investments in labs; VNF Exchange can significantly reduce such expenses with pre-certified components and reducing TCO for the CSPs.

Tech Mahindra’s VNF Exchange also enables “Innovative Business Models” for VNF vendors who can validate their solutions with an ecosystem of products. VNF Exchange is designed to reduce the TCO for VNF vendors and, through pre-certification, can significantly accelerate Time-To-Market for the VNF vendors.

“The evolution to virtualized networks is in full swing, as CSP’s globally are now focused on deploying and scaling this new network architecture as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said Amit Tiwari, vice president strategic alliances and systems engineering, Affirmed Networks . “Tech Mahindra’s VNF exchange is designed to empower CSPs to accelerate this transformation by providing pre-certified solutions from industry leaders. Deep domain expertise gained from virtualized deployments at some of the world’s leading networks, enables us to help operators realize the material savings and revenue growth offered by this transformational technology.”

“IoT, new classes of devices and new applications are continuing to put new demands on the networks,” said Lynn Comp, Sr. Director, Industry and Sales Enabling, Network Platforms Group, Intel . “Transforming communications infrastructure with SDN and NFV offers service providers the opportunity to build agile, elastic networks that will allow them to meet these growing demands. We are excited to see Tech Mahindra, a member of Intel Network Builders, launch its VNF Exchange. Pre-certification via VNF-Exchange is a welcome step in further acceleration of our shared industry vision of network transformation.”

“Carl Dcosta, Vice-President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels, Oracle Communications said, "VNF Exchange from a services partner like Tech Mahindra can help CSPs choose technologies from leading software providers such as Oracle, in turn, benchmarking our core network VNF's for reliability, scalability, and performance. Programs such as VNF Exchange can offer CSPs choice, which ultimately can free them from legacy network vendor lock-in."

“NFV holds significant potential for the communications industry as providers work to modernize their networks,” said Darrell Jordan-Smith, vice president, Worldwide ICT Sales, Red Hat . “Red Hat is pleased to collaborate with Tech Mahindra as part of its VNF Exchange to help highlight how open source solutions are enabling the communications industry to modernize with more agile, flexible, and scalable solutions.”

“RIFT.io and Tech Mahindra share a common mission to accelerate SDN/NFV deployments to meet CSPs transformation initiatives” said Vincent Spinelli SVP, Global Sales and Marketing, RIFT.io . “RIFT.io applauds and looks forward to actively participating in Tech Mahindra’s VNF Exchange initiative. It is an ideal vehicle for customers to pre-certify an interoperable multi-vendor VNF Network Service. Together, our two companies can address the requirements of Cloud Function Builders and Cloud Service Providers at any stage of application and VNF product development and delivery.”

Network Services are a key part of Tech Mahindra’s Communication business which accounts for nearly half the company’s overall business. Being the only vendor-agnostic and an integrated IT and Network Services provider, Tech Mahindra has deep expertise spanning across all network domains including RAN (Radio Access Network), Fiber, Core Networks, IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and Enterprise.

Tech Mahindra’s network services offerings span across the entire network lifecycle starting from consulting, planning, network architecture and design, network planning and rollout, network testing and certification, network operations and EoL (End of Life) management to RUN networks better. With over 30+ years of proven track record of delivering best-in-class services to major telecom service providers across every continent, Tech Mahindra has extensive capabilities in designing and running network, enabling adoption of new technologies and coming up with new monetizable solutions.

Certain statements in this release concerning the future prospects of Tech Mahindra Limited (“the Company” or “TechM”) are forward-looking statements. These statements by their nature involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the Company’s actual results differ materially from such forward looking statements. The Company, from time to time, makes written and oral forward-looking statements based on information available with the management of the Company and the Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company.