HomeNewsIndustry leaders demonstrate breakthrough in cross-carrier automated network provisioning

Industry leaders demonstrate breakthrough in cross-carrier automated network provisioning

Ground breaking LSO Sonata API demonstrated at MEF17 for autonomous control of multiple networks

London – Colt Technology Services, in conjunction with technology partners AT&T, Orange, Ciena, Amdocs and Fujitsu has brought the concept of the customer controlled network closer to reality.

Through the demonstration of a number of MEF Forum LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) integration points, the breakthrough brings end customers one step closer to benefiting from a consistent experience in network provisioning no matter where customers want services delivered or through which network partner.

At present, long and expensive bilateral and proprietary implementation projects are currently necessary when two operators want to bring about a level of automated interaction between their networks. Moreover, once built the automation is not reusable.

The Proof of Concept (PoC) demonstrates the feasibility of orchestrated, on demand, API-driven customer control of network, cloud and on-premise infrastructure from a single enterprise controller. This allows for finer cost control without compromising customer experience, even in environments with wildly fluctuating demand.

Colt and its technology partners will be demonstrating these MEF LSO integration points as part of the MEF17 Proof of Concept showcase.

This PoC is a real validation of the power of the first release of the LSO Sonata SDK (Software Development Kit), announced by the MEF in October 2017.  The interface is a ground breaking standardised open API for automated real-time ordering and provisioning of SDN-based (Software Defined Networking) services between interconnected service providers, enabling interaction between different providers’ SDN architectures in near real-time.

Release 1 of the Sonata SDK, demonstrated in this PoC, covers address validation, serviceability and ordering use-cases between carriers and cloud providers.

In addition, Colt is demonstrating a production implementation of a customer facing SDN API allowing customers to take full autonomous control of their networks and integrate them into their wider service delivery platforms.

“The capability we plan to show at the MEF17 Proof of Concept Showcase in Orlando, Florida, 13-16 November, demonstrates what is possible with powerful APIs and close collaboration among service providers.  Colt sees the API requirement growing in importance as customers continue to demand greater control across multiple service domains, on-premise and remote, through their own orchestration platform.  Our customer facing SDN API shows that we are committed to the goal of being part of a wider automation ecosystem that will allow our customers to really unleash the power of our network”, said Mirko Voltolini, Head Network on Demand, Colt.

Partner quotes

Chris Rice, Senior Vice President, Domain 2.0 Architecture & Design, AT&T

AT&T supports the LSO Sonata framework. It is especially powerful when two carriers that interconnect through this API are both using ONAP, the open source network operating system for Sonata and MEF, under the hood. This will drastically accelerate the process of moving from a proof of concept to scale production deployments.”


Pierre-Louis Biaggi, Vice President Network Domain, Orange Business Service
This demonstration clearly shows the power of TM Forum Open APIs and the MEF LSO framework to extend the capacities of regional operators. Together with our operator partners, we are highlighting how to combine our assets and create global and elastic ONAP-based connectivity services.”

 

Mark Gibson, Director of Product Management, Amdocs

Inter-carrier service ordering is a critical business priority for CSPs delivering integrated connectivity services. Amdocs is proud to collaborate with Colt and our other partners in this showcase. It highlights Amdocs’ virtualized inter-carrier scaling solution based on ONAP that delivers elastic inter-carrier Ethernet services.”

Adan Pope, Chief Information Technology Officer, Ciena

“Ciena’s involvement in this Proof of Concept demonstration affirms our approach to building solutions that intelligently automate operator networks and services. We believe in the value of open standards, open APIs and framework architectures. Ciena is committed to delivering industry leading platforms and solutions that yield measurable business outcomes for our customers, as they continue their transformation to become digital service providers.”

 

 

Editors’ notes

 

API – In the context of LSO, API describes one of the Management Interface Reference Points based on the requirements specified in an Interface Profile, along with a data model, the protocol that defines operations on the data and the encoding format used to encode data according to the data model.

 

LSO – Open and interoperable automation of management operations over the entire lifecycle of Layer 2 and Layer 3 Connectivity Services. This includes fulfilment, control, performance, assurance, usage, security, analytics and policy capabilities, over all the network domains that require coordinated management and control in order to deliver the service.

 

The underlying LSO architecture is an agile approach to streamlining and automating the service lifecycle in a sustainable fashion for coordinated management and control across all network domains responsible for delivering an end-to-end connectivity service. The development of Sonata enables the delivery of orchestrated on demand services over more automated and interconnected networks, moving the idea of ubiquitous, global, network on demand service propositions closer to reality.

 

 

In 2016, AT&T and Colt held the first successful SDN interoperability trial proving that SDN architectures from different network service providers can interoperate with each other across continents.

 

 

About Colt

 

Colt aims to be the leader in enabling customers’ digital transformation through agile and on-demand, high bandwidth solutions. The Colt IQ Network connects over 800 data centres across Europe, Asia and North America’s largest business hubs, with over 25,000 on-net buildings and growing.

 

Colt has built its reputation on putting customers first. Customers include data intensive organisations spanning over 200 cities in nearly 30 countries. Colt is a recognised innovator and pioneer in software defined networks (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV). Privately owned, Colt is one of the most financially sound companies in its industry and able to provide the best customer experience at a competitive price. For more information, please visit www.colt.net. 

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