BTI Systems targets NFV at the network edge

Optical transport systems vendor BTI Systems has unveiled new capabilities for its 7800 packet-optical transport platforms designed to help service providers bring network functions virtualization (NFV) capabilities to the central office. The BTI 7800 Virtual Network Edge capabilities enable the platform to host server-based application blades, which the company promises to populate with applications from third parties, operators themselves, as well as its own development team.

BTI Systems Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Sally Bament says that two or three "top tier" traditional service providers have driven development of the new capabilities to advance their cloud network and virtualization strategies.

The company will offer a proof of concept demonstration of the Virtual Network Edge offering at SDN & OpenFlow World Congress in Dusseldorf this week. The demonstration will see a member of the BTI 7800 Series host Active Broadband Networks' Software-Defined Virtual Network Gateway (SDN-vNG) software via an applications blade as a means to support a virtual broadband network gateway (vBNG). An OpenDaylight SDN controller will manage the NFV-enabled optical transport platform during the demonstration.

Bament says that BTI is recruiting an ecosystem of applications partners such as Active Broadband Networks to enable the company to offer a variety of NFV functions via the new applications blade capability. These could cover several functions, including virtual routers, Bament says. BTI likely will develop some applications on its own as well, she added. When these applications will be offered to the market depends on the licensing process as well as the milestone dates of the customers driving the offering's development.

"BTI has created a unique architectural approach to virtualizing network functions by supporting standard COTS compute in a chassis-based solution, versus stacking 1RU servers," said Current Analysis Principal Analyst Rick Talbot via a BTI Systems press release. "Service providers can reap the cost-effectiveness, performance, and innovation of a vendor-agnostic disaggregated hardware solution without sacrificing the switching capacity, density, and economic benefits provided by the low-cost network element interconnection and shared power and cooling of an integrated chassis approach."

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