The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) said it convened a "ground breaking" meeting of network functions virtualisation (NFV) standards bodies and open source communities that will boost adoption by reducing fragmentation in the sector.
Groups including the 3GPP, ATIS, Broadband Forum, FMTF, IETF, ITU-T SG 15, MEF, OASIS/TOSCA, Open Cloud Connect, ONF, OpenDaylight, OPNFV and TM-Forum participated in a workshop held in the U.S. this week. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the alignment of cloud- and network-centric initiatives designed to "ensure successful realisation of NFV through automation," ETSI explained in a statement.
ETSI noted that its NFV industry specification group has delivered plans covering NFV requirements, use cases, architectural framework, terminology, management and orchestration, security, performance and reliability over the past three years. However, it added that various standards development organisations and open source communities working on NFV use different "information models and data models", which has resulted in "fragmentation and complexity for implementation."
That complexity, in turn, results in "increased cost" and delays in the time taken to bring automated NFV equipment to market.
ETSI said the workshop helped to identify the challenges and opportunities associated with developing and using various modelling approaches for NFV. It added that ongoing collaboration between the various standards bodies and open source communities "will help to avoid fragmentation in NFV information modelling in order to deliver the services and network automation capabilities which are key benefits of NFV."
Further, the workshop participants agreed on a cooperation plan designed to boost progress in addressing the challenges and opportunities of NFV by the end of 2016. Groups will offer initial feedback on the plan in March, ETSI explained.
Technology Business Research previously predicted that total spending on NFV and SDN markets will begin to ramp in 2017 as clarity emerges in the potential use cases of both technologies. The total value of the combined markets will hit nearly $157 billion (€143 billion) by 2020 as part of that growth, the company forecast.
For more:
- see this ETSI announcement
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Report: NFV and SDN spending to reach almost $157B by 2020