How ETSI is Cementing the Foundation for Future of NFV in Telecoms

ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, is acting as a torchbearer for laying the foundation of a common code of conduct for Network Function Virtualization space in telecoms.

In line with the above objective, ETSI's Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Industry Specification Group (ISG) has successfully completed Phase 1 of its work with the publication of 11 ETSI Group Specifications.

These specifications build on the first release of ISG documents published in October 2013 and include an infrastructure overview, an updated architectural framework, and descriptions of the compute, hypervisor and network domains of the infrastructure. They also cover management and orchestration, security and trust, resilience and service quality metrics.

These documents result from 2 years of intensive work by more than 240 organizations sharing the same common goal to quickly define Network Functions Virtualization. “I’d like to thank all of the NFV ISG participants for their tremendous dedication through our numerous face-to-face meetings and conference calls to evolve the NFV vision from the original operator whitepaper and bring these documents to publication” said Steven Wright, Chair of ETSI NFV ISG.

This second release of NFV documents is important to industry because it lays the foundation for this technology. It provides common and agreed definitions of the key concepts of NFV and allows the many players involved to speak a common language and collaborate with each other. This collaboration is evident in the success of the NFV Proof of Concept programme (also part of the first phase of NFV work), which has already produced over 30 multi-company demonstrations of the capabilities of NFV.

ISG NFV Continues

NFV Phase 2 is now well underway. Work started immediately after the eighth plenary meeting in November 2014 on 28 new documents and more are expected over the coming 2 years. The main objectives of this second phase of work are to encourage interoperability building upon the achievements made in the first two years of the ISG.

This new phase of work will include both normative and informative content. Adding normative requirements will provide the clarity required for interoperability and formal testing. Another key element of Phase 2 will be to work more closely with other standards bodies to help focus their work and to avoid duplication, and to collaborate within open source projects developing NFV implementations.

Operators and vendors alike recognise the benefits of the ISG’s collaborative approach and its innovative standardization cooperation model, built upon assertive goals, pragmatism, lightweight process, and unprecedented degree of network operator collaboration, enabling the first phase of NFV work to be completed in record time.

“Phase 1 exceeded our expectations in fostering an open NFV ecosystem and influencing standards development organizations, open source communities and vendor roadmaps; achieving and validating interoperability at critical reference points is the key focus for phase 2” said Don Clarke, Chair of NFV ISG NOC.

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