Orange brings Radisys’ vMRF to ONAP Amsterdam
Orange Labs Networks has integrated Radisys Corporation’s virtualized Media Resource Function (vMRF) into the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Amsterdam release.
Orange is a founding member of ONAP, which is a combination of AT&T’s Open ECOMP and The Linux Foundation’s Open-O. ONAP serves as an open source platform with a focus on the lifecycle management of virtual network functions (VNFs). Radisys’ vMRF, on the other hand, is a software-only media processing solution, providing multimedia services like voice over LTE, voice over WiFi and WebRTC.
The purpose of ONAP Amsterdam is to address challenges coupled to the lack of commonality among vendor platforms and significant customizations, which has become a major challenge for communications service providers (CSPs) deploying new services. ONAP’s Amsterdam release is intended to address these challenges by introducing an open architecture for network automation and VNF lifecycle management, enabling interoperable network and application services at a global scale
“Orange Labs Networks selected Radisys vMRF due to its state of readiness as a commercial-grade VNF which has been widely deployed by the industry,” Adnan Saleem, CTO software and cloud services for Radisys, told RCR Wireless News. “What makes this integration unique is that it is the first integration of a commercial-grade vMRF with ONAP Amsterdam, and demonstrates full lifecycle management from validation to onboarding to automated elastic scaling and policy-based closed loop automation.”
According to Radisys, the integration of its vMRF with ONAP Amsterdam demonstrates to the industry that ONAP is ready to easily onboard commercial VNFs. “The challenges associated with onboarding commercial VNFs include refining and fine-tuning APIs and interfaces which enable VNF integration with ONAP and demonstrating the VNF’s full lifecycle management,” said Saleem. “At Radisys, we addressed these challenges by working closely with partners like Orange Lab Networks and the wider ONAP community and by leveraging a highly agile development and integration environment.”
Radisys said it is enabling the ONAP community to launch open infrastructures based on network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN), in addition to providing a blueprint for virtualized real-time voice and video services over 4G/LTE networks. The overall solution includes vMRF lifecycle management of ONAP infrastructure, such as elastic scaling, policy driven controls, automation and management.
“Our collaboration with Orange on this first demonstration of vMRF on ONAP sets the stage for
operators like Orange to transform their networks with other commercial VNFs,” said
Saleem in a statement. “We are excited to be able to participate with Orange Labs Networks, and other service providers to not only onboard our VNFs, but also bring the expertise to onboard other VNFs and provide complete ONAP integration services to accelerate delivery of new innovative applications.”
