Customer experience specialist Amdocs claims it has created a system to convert mobile operators from physical network users into comms service providers in the cloud. It unveiled details of the new service at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona.

It has achieved this by blending its Network Cloud Service Orchestrator (NCSO) with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. This, it says, creates an open catalogue driven system that works with any vendor’s equipment. Amdocs claimed it can help mobile operators transform from fixed infrastructure users into cloud friendly communications service providers (CSPs).

The NCSO can orchestrate the mapping of telecommunications services onto a software-led environment, claimed Amdocs. It does this by creating the conditions for continuous design, instantiation and the assurance of complex network services created from virtual network functions (VNFs).

By virtualising functions that were previously bound up with hardware, the NCSO creates a greater degree of fluidity and flexibility. This means CSPs can introduce new services and adapt to customer demand in a fraction of the time, claims Amdocs.

Amdocs chose Red Hat because its Enterprise Linux OpenStack system has emerged as a cloud platform for network function virtualisation, it said.

An Amdocs NCSO, which uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack, has been part of several NFV lab trials with tier one telco providers globally. In the beta trials the telco users have created a range of use cases with multiple vendors, including virtual CPE (customer premises equipment), virtual EPC (evolved packet core) and virtual IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses the high-performance Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor as, it claims, this forms a more stable, secure and reliable operating system.

“OpenStack has become a de facto choice for NFV trials across the globe,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager of OpenStack at Red Hat