ONAP Embraces More Members

ONAP announced Thursday morning that it has added a host of new companies to its open source MANO (management and orchestration) project that operates under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.

The new members included Accenture, CertusNet, Coriant, Juniper Networks Inc., Mavenir, Mirantis, PCCW Global, Red Hat, VEON and Windstream.

Earlier this year, AT&T's ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy) and OPEN-O (Open Orchestrator Project) were combined into Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) at the Linux Foundation , which was a move that was hailed by the industry as proof that competing or similar open source technologies can work together. (See Linux Foundation Welds OPEN-O, ECOMP Into ONAP.)

While the hope is that ONAP will be the glue that binds together the fragmented MANO sector, ETSI's Open Source MANO (OSM) effort is pursuing some of the same goals on its own. (See Big Names Board the ONAP Express.)

AT&T developed ECOMP on its own several years ago as an orchestration platform for its network. While AT&T has had ECOMP in production for several years, OPEN-O had its first code release last year. Combining AT&T 's 8.5 million code lines from ECOMP with millions of lines of code from OPEN-O is no small task. All told, ONAP's members serve 38% of the global wireless customers.

The new members announced today weren't unexpected. During the Open Networking Summit in April, Yachen Wang, deputy director of the network technology department at China Mobile Research Institute, said ONAP was actively seeking new partners. Along with some additional new members, it was announced at ONS that the code and documentation were open to the community. (See ONAP Takes Center Stage at ONS.)

Last month more than 200 developers met to further map out ONAP’s functional architecture. That same group is meeting today and tomorrow in Beijing to flesh out use cases such as vCPE and VoLTE. The plan is to have a unified ECOMP and OPEN-O architecture in place later this year. Also this year, ONAP said it would release an architecture that integrates open source ECOMP and ONAP to support 5G, IoT and cloud applications and services.

"With today’s news, the ONAP braintrust continues to expand, representing more than 35 organizations from around the world," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, networking at The Linux Foundation. "ONAP enables a new business model of faster innovation and is now an integral part of all major vendors in Networking Community."

In addition to AT&T, ONAP counts Orange, Bell Canada , China Mobile , China Telecom and China Unicom among its service providers members. Whether Verizon will join the ONAP cause remains to be seen.

While ONAP has its work cut out for it, ECOMP and OPEN-O are software-based and modular. At ONS, VNF onboarding and including OSS into orchestration were mentioned as two priorities.

For the latest update on ONAP, join Telco Transformation's radio show at noon on June 15. The show will feature Joshipira and Mazin Gilbert, vice president of advanced technology at AT&T Labs. (See ONAP Poised to Transform Industry.)

— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation