• Catalogue of pre-validated VNFs
• Over 60 partner companies within the OpenNFV Solution Portal
• Three levels of testing by HPE OpenNFV Labs
• Further enhancements to follow in 2016

Forget Narnia, Christmas for me was always former Poet Laureate John Masefield’s thrilling 1930s adventure yarn, The Box of Delights. This year, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has opened up its own box of delights, in the form of a portal-based NFV solutions catalogue. It might not have quite the same appeal as snow-covered English fields, a gang of criminals, a mysterious traveller with a magic box, and the appearance of Herne the Hunter, but for network architects and service developers it could offer a number of delights.

In what HPE says is an industry first, the OpenNFV Solution Portal provides communication service providers (CSPs) with access to pre-validated virtual network function (VNFs) solutions from more than 60 HPE OpenNFV partners.

CSPs can search the catalogue by use case or vendor, selecting the solutions that best address their specific requirements. By providing these pre-validated VNFs, HPE says it is delivering a critical component of the NFV service lifecycle management process, helping streamline on-boarding and accelerating time-to-market, while reducing a CSP’s capital and operational expenditures.

“Providing CSPs with an array of pre-validated VNFs is critical to accelerating their journey to the telco cloud,” said Werner Schaefer, VP of Network Functions Virtualisation at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “The portal gives CSPs access to the breadth of the OpenNFV partner ecosystem and ready-to-deploy solutions, helping them offer more compelling services and adapt quickly to changing demands.”

Available solutions have been tested and pre-validated in HPE OpenNFV Labs, to help ensure CSPs have a consistent and reusable way to on-board and configure VNFs. Partner solutions are validated on up to three levels of testing, depending on solution requirements:

1. Basic on-boarding – VNF on-boarding and lifecycle validation, virtualised infrastructure manager level monitoring and basic functional testing
2. Deployment and performance boundaries – Functional and performance testing, network service orchestration and service chaining
3. Integration into service operation processes – Lifecycle management and upstream OSS/BSS integration

“At Metaswitch, we believe the key to accelerating the adoption of NFV is to enable network operators to access pre-validated, VNFs that are interoperable within a multi-vendor environment,” said Brandon Harper, SVP Business Development and Channels at partner company Metaswitch. “HPE’s OpenNFV Solutions Portal, which provides a way for operators to select, publish and consume VNFs, will be a valuable asset for helping network operators get the most out of NFV.”

The OpenNFV Solution Portal is being delivered in multiple phases, with the catalogue containing pre-validated VNFs available now. Future phases, including a marketplace to acquire pre-validated VNFs, a solution designer and deployment services are planned for release sometime in 2016.

Meanwhile, give yourselves some holiday cheer, pick up a copy of The Box of Delights (or watch the BBC’s marvellous 1980s adaptation), revisit your childhood, and savour some much-needed escapism. And remember, “The Wolves are running…”