Originally posted: https://inform.tmforum.org/nfv-it-transformation/2016/11/platforms-dont-ride-wave-create
Platforms and APIs also took center stage at the InFocus event’s awards ceremony, with an important project called Enabling the digital service marketplace with automated onboarding taking the Best in Show award.
In presenting the Best in Show award, Laurent Leboucher, Chairman of the Forum’s Collaboration Sub-Committee and Vice President APIs and Digital Ecosystems, Orange, said the decision was unanimous and that the project represents a “breakthrough from the software engineering standpoint.”
“This may be the best Catalyst we’ve seen in the last five years,” he said.
The project which is championed by AT&T, China Mobile, Orange and Verizon and includes Amdocs, Bristol is Open, Cloud Best Practices, EnterpriseWeb, Huawei, IBM and Oracle as participants, is building a platform prototype for network operators. It is a merger of several award-winning projects and is aimed at automating the entire lifecycle of a virtual function from procurement and onboarding to testing and validation, deployment, configuration and assurance.
To do this requires development of a common standards-based metamodel, so the team has been working with other standards-development organizations such as OASIS and ETSI and with open source groups like Open Platform for NFV to build one. The Catalyst has started by looking at how to onboard virtual network functions from supplier partners, but the marketplace the team is developing can be extended to include all kinds of virtual functions, for example, Internet of Everything services and applications from partners in a digital ecosystem.
A breakthrough
In presenting the Best in Show award, Laurent Leboucher, Chairman of the Forum’s Collaboration Sub-Committee and Vice President APIs and Digital Ecosystems, Orange, said the decision was unanimous and that the project represents a “breakthrough from the software engineering standpoint.”
“This may be the best Catalyst we’ve seen in the last five years,” he said.
