Coriant integrates Aricent’s NFV MANO
Coriant is integrating Aricent’s network functions virtualization (NFV) management and orchestration (MANO) framework to accelerate and power its Transcend SDN-solution. The companies said the collaboration will enable operators to deploy virtualized value-added services quicker and secure new services.
NFV involves virtualizing network architecture by decoupling software from hardware, while MANO emerged as an architectural framework for managing cloud-based virtual network functions (VNFs) in a NFV architecture. According to a report from IHS Markit, the global NFV market will be worth $15.5 billion by 2020, with over 70% originating from different market segments, primarily VNFs.
“The virtualization market is experiencing explosive growth. Strong enterprise and communications service provider demand is dramatically disrupting the traditional branch-office router market,” said Dietmar Wendt, president, communications business unit, Aricent, in a statement. “Aricent’s NFV-MANO solution pushes the cloud journey forward by teaching a network to ‘self-steer’. VNF Management is of particular interest to businesses that are moving their applications to the cloud and those with multiple branches that want to utilize high speed off-the-shelf internet connectivity but still want to have a service level agreement (SLA) or control over those links.”
Aricent reports its NFV MANO framework can help manage complex VNFs. Coriant’s SDN Solution, on the other hand, combines NFV and SDN capabilities with an automated application environment to provide network control. The companies said the joint solution could be used by operators to offer low latency connectivity solutions for automotive vehicles, connected homes and industrial IoT.
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) developed MANO as an architectural framework that consisted of three main blocks: the NFV orchestrator, the VNF manager and the virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM). Aricent provides a pre-packaged virtualization infrastructure solution based on the ETSI NFV architecture with a VIM like OpenStack or VMware services for launching NFV solution through various interfaces.
“This partnership reinforces Coriant’s commitment to open networking and industry collaboration to enhance its customers’ service delivery capabilities in multi-vendor, multi-layer, and multi-domain environments. Aricent’s MANO framework is a perfect example of industry innovation in SDN-enabled on-demand service orchestration and automated provisioning in a multi-vendor optical networking environment,” said Filipe Caetano, vice president, product management, Coriant. “We’re elated to partner with Aricent in this important technology journey and help advance the state of cloud applications drive increased demand for on-demand capabilities.”
