Amdocs Partners with AT&T; on ECOMP for NFV, SDN Implementations
By Amdocs is acting as the integrator for those who use AT&T’s ECOMP platform to build software-centric network services, the company announced this week.
AT&T’s ECOMP software was created to help developers and telecommunications businesses become more agile and efficient so they can expedite service introduction. It addresses the move to embrace network functions virtualization (NFV), open source software, software-defined networking (SDN), as well as the up-and-coming applications including 4K video, augmented reality (AR), the Internet of Things (IoT), and virtual reality (VR).
More specifically, ECOMP can help enable network operators to automate configuration and management of their networks, implement master service orchestration, do rapid service design, and have a single view of both physical and virtual network assets and services. Indeed, this functionality is spelling out in the long form of ECOMP, which stands for Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy.
ECOMP was introduced by AT&T at the Open Networking Summit in March, where AT&T offered an update on its software-defined network buildout. The Active and Available Inventory is one component of ECOMP, as Sal Talamo explained in an April AT&T blog. A&AI keeps inventory of available compute, network, and storage resources at any time, so when new service orders come in it is clear what is available to create those services.
AT&T recently announced its intention to create an ecosystem around ECOMP, said Chris Rice, vice president of advanced technologies and architecture at AT&T Labs, and Amdocs is among its first ECOMP partners.
“Software-defined networks and virtualized network functions are changing the way we use networks and services,” writes Kathy Meier-Hellstern, assistant vice president in the AT&T Advanced Technology Platforms and Architecture organization, in a recent blog. “Imagine having on-demand access for designing, testing, and deploying virtualized services, with the ability to configure, manage, and administer them in near real time. ECOMP is the software platform implementation of this vision, and the ECOMP Portal manages these virtualized networks and services. The ECOMP Portal is a web-based control panel that applications plug into.”
Edited by Peter Bernstein