Open source network automation platform to enable 5G-oriented transformation of telco service delivery

21 November 2017, Shenzhen, China – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, supported the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) project’s first code release, ONAP Amsterdam. The release signals the transformation of the next generation of telco service automation system – focused on 5G-oriented services, based on cloud native and virtualized infrastructures.

After merging OPEN-O and openECOMP in early 2017, the Linux Foundation launched the ONAP project. Amsterdam is the first platform release for the project. The ONAP project has built momentum throughout the year by organizing three large-scale developer summits to complete use case and requirement definitions, use case-driven architectural integration of two original projects, and the establishment of 30 sub-projects. The next event for the project is the Developer Design Forum that will focus on the preliminary discussions of the next platform release, Beijing.

Amsterdam passed validation test for two initial use cases: Residential vCPE, and voLTE. he voLTE use case is highly complex and includes vEPC and vIMS service composed with nine vNFs from different vendors deployed in both Edge-DC and Core-DC as well as the L3VPN connections between two data centers. The test covers function of end-to-end service model design, automated service orchestration, status query, self-healing and instant deleting. The successful deployment and management of voLTE services demonstrates that the ONAP platform has the initial capability of model designing, instantiating, and closed-loop control of end-to-end complex services through the third-party VNF-manager that aligns with the ETSI NFV architecture to achieve individual deployment management.

Collaborating with partners, ZTE played an active role in contributing to the collaborative development and testing of Amsterdam. The two projects led by ZTE, MSB and Holmes, have passed initial testing and are included in the Amsterdam release. Other ZTE contributions also include community integration testing with commercial vNF of vSPGW and vMME for vEPC service, and successful integration of third-party cloud platforms and vNFs from third-party vendors during testing.

“Contributions from members like ZTE are critical to the success of ONAP,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking and Automation, the Linux Foundation. “Diverse perspectives from across the industry help build ONAP’s strong focus on automation, which will help move the industry forward in accelerating the development and deployment of next-gen use cases, such as 5G and IOT.”

Planning for the next version of ONAP, Beijing, has already begun. ZTE will continue to cooperate with partners to launch a carrier-grade Beijing release to promote the commercial process of 5G-oriented transformation of telco automatic service delivery and system maintenance.