ONF’s Marc Cohn reflects on recent industry events, recapping the latest ETSI NFV ISG meeting.
ONF has maintained a close relationship with the ETSI NFV ISG responsible for defining the NFV use cases, requirements, and specifications, since its inception in 2013. At the recent meeting of the NFV ISG held in San Jose late last month, a set of joint meetings were held with ONF to discuss how open SDN fits into the NFV architecture, and separately, OpenDaylight and OPNFV as well.
Below is an excerpt from my recent article posted on SDxCentral addressing the collaboration; the full article can also be read in its entirety here.
Summertime is typically a time for holidays, family, and a break from the hectic pace of our professional lives. But not in Silicon Valley, where the 11th meeting was held for the ETSI Network Functions Virtualization Industry Specification Group (NFV ISG). In fact, with the OpenDaylight Summit and the MEF quarterly meeting also being held in the same week, things are as busy as ever.
It was fitting that Dell, Intel, Brocade, and Red Hat joined forces to sponsor the meeting, ensuring a comfortable and convenient venue for global visitors and locals as well. Hosting the meeting in San Jose offered opportunities for a series of joint meetings with other key SDN and NFV industry groups and open-source projects, which has proved to be instrumental toward advancing collaboration, NFV requirements refinement, and ultimately, adoption.
As was the case with the three preceding meetings for the NFV group held in Silicon Valley, turnout was among the highest ever (see Figure 1) as the NFV community continues to grow:
- 38 operators
- 282 ETSI NFV ISG members
- 38 NFV proofs-of-concept (PoCs) accepted by the ISG, addressing 100 percent of the NFV use cases
NFV ISG Chair Steven Wright stated: “I’m encouraged about the significant growth of the NFV ISG and the NFV community. ETSI NFV ISG continues to play a major role in the evolution of NFV. From the beginning, we have embraced openness and collaboration with industry standards bodies and open-source projects as we strive towards expanding NFV adoption.”
One particularly positive step adopted at the 10th NFV ISG meeting, in Sanya, China, was a decision to make all NFV draft specifications publicly available to motivate greater industry-wide participation. Several documents have been posted for public comment.
The ISG took full advantage of its Silicon Valley venue to conduct a series of joint meetings with:
- Open Networking Foundation (ONF) – to collaborate on information model development
- OpenDaylight Project – which concurrently held its annual OpenDaylight Summit in nearby Santa Clara
- Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) – to discuss requirements and priorities
ONF Executive Director Dan Pitt commented: “ONF remains committed to supporting the NFV ISG, which is especially important with the growing interest in carrier-grade SDN. The joint work on information modeling, including TMForum as well, is especially critical towards achieving the degree of openness and extensibility our operator members (and the operator community in general) are seeking as they move to automate their network provisioning with SDN.”
For the full SDx Central article, read “NFV Insider #11: Collaboration (and More Collaboration).”
- Marc Cohn, ONF Market Area Director and Senior Vice President for ClearPath Networks
