RAD Introduces New D-NFV Orchestrator to its vCPE Solution

RAD, the industry pioneer of virtualization at the customer edge, has expanded its Service Assured Access (SAA) solutions portfolio by introducing a Distributed NFV (D-NFV) orchestrator as part of its RADview management suite. The orchestrator provides complete lifecycle management for the network edge, including planning, provisioning and performance monitoring for virtual and non-virtual resources.

“A successful transition to programmable networks with centralized end-to-end service orchestration requires integration with domain orchestrators,” explains Ulik Broida, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at RAD. “Our new D-NFV orchestrator for the network edge uses open source software and standard interfaces to simplify integration with higher layer orchestrators and OSS/BSS platforms,” he continues. “Featuring an intuitive, simple-to-operate best-in-class user interface, offline planning, point-and-click provisioning, application management and other tools, it accelerates service deployment while reducing costs.”

“RADview simplifies complex everyday tasks at the control room,” Broida adds, “but most importantly, it efficiently controls large heterogeneous networks based on RAD products while ensuring reliable service delivery with deep visibility into network and service performance.”

Customer Edge Virtualization Engine
The D-NFV orchestrator enhances RAD’s vCPE platform, the ETX-2i, a powerful IP and Carrier Ethernet FPGA NID/NTU with a field pluggable x86 D-NFV module for hosting virtual network functions (VNFs). Specially designed to serve as a virtualization engine at the customer edge for vCPE applications, the ETX-2i supports various architecture and VNF placement options to meet agility, performance, security and cost needs.

“What makes ETX-2i unique is its dynamic service-oriented flow treatment (SOFT) for optimizing hardware and software resources, especially when chaining services, and to allow the use of more applications with better QoE,” Broida notes.

“A Welcome Development”
“Given the widespread industry attention that virtual premises equipment is getting, it’s becoming clear that vCPE will play a pivotal role in the transition to SDN and NFV,” commented Dr. Jim Metzler of Ashton Metzler Associates. “But the key to realizing the full potential of the vCPE is management and orchestration," he says. “Solutions such as RAD’s, therefore, are a welcome development in ensuring that virtualized networks will indeed become a reality.”

RAD’s vCPE solution won the Network Virtualization Industry Award for NFV Innovation of the Year at Network Virtualization & SDN World 2014, and has been shortlisted this year for a Telecoms.com Award for Virtualization Excellence and a Broadband World Forum Award for Best Virtualization Solution.