BARCELONA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – Wind River®, a world leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems, has introduced Wind River Carrier Grade Communications Server, the industry’s 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,” said Mike Langlois, general manager of the communications business for Wind River. “While 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 River’s DNA.”
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
