Wind River Unveils Industry¹s First Commercial Carrier Grade Platform for NFV
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
NFV-ready carrier grade software supports six ‘9s’ reliability at five
times improved price and performance over enterprise software offerings used in traditional IT datacenters.
Fully integrated solution for virtualized telecom applications delivers
carrier grade virtualization, reducing time-to-market and operational expense, and accelerating the path to NFV.
Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server, optimized for and
running on Intel® architecture-based COTS servers from HP, will be showcased at Mobile World Congress.
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS, BARCELONA, Spain Feb. 24, 2014 – Wind River®, a world leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems, has introduced Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server, the industry¹s first commercial carrier grade fully integrated and virtualized software platform. The solution is designed specifically for network functions virtualization (NFV) deployment and seamlessly integrates with existing networks.
Carrier networks are evolving toward full virtualization of function, and central to this transformation is a platform that allows easy virtualization of applications while maintaining the core attributes of a carrier grade solution: availability, scalability, security and management,² said Mike Langlois, general manager of the communications business for Wind River. ³While many companies supplying enterprise IT solutions may claim they offer an NFV solution, without the ability to deliver on carrier grade, those products are not a true fit to successfully achieve NFV. Carrier grade has long been part of Wind River¹s DNA.²
A complete NFV solution, Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server will enable operators to migrate their networks to NFV architectures while maintaining the carrier grade attributes they are known for. Customers can onboard and deploy NFV applications right out of the box, giving them a competitive jump-start in becoming NFV-ready.
Developed by telecom experts, Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server is based on Wind River Open Virtualization with Wind River Linux, optimized real-time Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM++), carrier grade enhancements to OpenStack®, and Intel® Data Plane Development Kit (Intel
DPDK) accelerated vSwitch technologies.
A hard requirement for telecommunications, carrier grade is essential for operators and service providers as they cannot deploy applications unless they can do the following:
Maintain existing five ‘five 9s’ or ‘six 9s’ (99.999 to 99.9999%)
reliability, translating to downtime as low as 30 seconds a year
Manage applications through their existing OSS/BSS/NMS systems
Provide significant scalability, especially as new device categories get
attached to the network as part of the Internet of Things
Achieve the service level agreement (SLA) performance and security
requirements they already guarantee their customers today with non-virtualized applications
A key value of NFV is the ability to run what used to be dedicated boxes on virtual machines on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server is optimized for and running on HP ProLiant servers and Intel® Xeon® processors for Communications Infrastructure Systems. Wind River is also working with HP to certify Wind River communications software on Network Equipment Building System (NEBS)-compliant HP ProLiant servers.
Embracing standards and openness, Wind River is a contributing member of the ETSI NFV Industry Standards Group, and has been actively working with leading telecom equipment companies and service providers on NFV and cloud-based proof-of-concepts over the past few years. Prior to the formalization of the NFV Industry Standards Group, Wind River was a key contributor to the early-stage NFV proof-of-concepts initiative by BT.
Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server is available in Q1 2014 as an early access release for select customers. To learn more about Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server and how Wind River is addressing the opportunities and challenges created by NFV and network transformation, visit http://www.windriver.com/announces/network-functions-virtualization/.
Wind River is showcasing its Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server at the Wind River booth in Hall 7, Stand 7J65 at Mobile World Congress. To learn more about Wind River at Mobile World Congress, visit http://www.windriver.com/events/mobile-world-congress-2014/.
About Wind River
Wind River, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), is a world leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems. The company has been pioneering computing inside embedded devices since 1981, and its technology is found in more than 1 billion products.
Wind River offers the industry’s most comprehensive embedded software portfolio, supported by world-class global professional services and support, and a broad partner ecosystem. Wind River delivers the technology and expertise that enables the innovation and deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems. To learn more, visit Wind River at www.windriver.com.
Wind River is a trademark or registered trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc. and its affiliates. Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
QUOTE SHEET:
‘One of the key drivers behind network transformation is the adoption of COTS-based hardware designed to help operators reduce total cost of ownership and shorten the time needed to upgrade or deploy new services.
Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server was designed to run on HP servers and has been pre-tested, validated and supported on a number of HP platforms created specifically for telecom and NFV applications. This joint effort will help customers embrace an NFV environment that provides the flexibility needed to keep quality and cost in check.’
– Werner Schaefer, Vice President, Network Functions Virtualization, HP
‘The technical contributions by Wind River to BT’s network evolution research were highly valuable and the results achieved helped to crystalize BT’s NFV thinking. Wind River understands the Carrier Grade environment, and their expertise played a significant role in the success of our NFV proof-of-concept prototypes. Our open collaboration with Wind River and other technology leaders has clearly demonstrated to the industry that the promise of NFV can be realized.’
– Don Clarke, Head of Network Evolution Innovation, BT
‘NFV plays a key role in our effort to transform networks into open, virtualized, standards-based architectures. The Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server employs key technologies consistent with the Intel Open Network Platform Server Reference Design such as Intel DPDK and OpenStack. Wind River has the telecommunications expertise to help our customers and ISV partners deliver outstanding solutions for SDN and NFV.
Their technology demonstrates a powerful, high performance and flexible element to building the next generation of open, software-defined infrastructure’
– Rose Schooler, Vice President and General Manager, Intel Communications
and Storage Infrastructure Group
‘The telecommunications industry is changing to tap the potential of cloud environments and network functions virtualization, and increasingly looking to open infrastructures and standards in order to achieve this. As a long time champion for Linux innovation and instrumental supporter for the Yocto Project, Wind River plays a key role in helping the open source community and telecommunications industry achieve new levels of innovation.’
– Mike Woster, Chief Operating Officer, The Linux Foundation
‘The telecommunications network is at the start of a major transformation.
The industry is looking towards NFV to enable service providers to transform their networks to quickly deliver new services and reduce costs.
Service agility is key. The migration to NFV requires telecom specific virtualization software to deliver real time traffic, scale to hundreds of millions of users, and support high reliability. Wind River has the telecommunications and carrier grade expertise to help companies move towards NFV and address the challenges of a changing network.’
– Lee Doyle, Principal Analyst, Doyle Research
