Category Archives: Amdocs

Amdocs and Microsoft team up to launch Cloud-Fusion

metalcloud_lowresAmdocs and Microsoft have collaborated to create an enterprise connectivity and applications solution, reports Telecoms.com.

Amdocs Cloud-Fusion will, according to Amdocs, enable the development of cloud service offerings including bandwidth, WAN optimisation and the delivery of committed SLAs. The solution combines Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure and Amdocs’ NFV-ready Network Cloud Service Orchestrator, which also lends it the ability to design and deliver VNFs from any network vendor. The combination, therefore, allow access to Azure’s business services and third-party Microsoft Azure Marketplace solutions, Amdocs says.

The Cloud-Fusion platform is intended to provide unified management, monitoring, orchestration and assurance, enabling service providers to automate fulfilment and operations of cloud-based services. The hopeful outcome is to improve customer experience

“Today 17 percent of all businesses each have more than 1,000 virtual machines supporting a range of business-critical applications that reside in the public cloud, up from 13 percent in 2015,” said Ann Hatchell, head of network marketing at Amdocs. “Service providers can offer a one-stop shop for differentiated hybrid cloud services with service guarantees for enterprise customers, and streamline end-to-end service management across telco and public cloud environments, thereby improving service agility and reducing complexity.”

“Service providers will be able to capture new revenue streams from their business segment customer base by adding cloud services and providing access to Microsoft Azure’s value-added business services and Azure Marketplace’s solutions through secure service provider networks,” said Bob De Haven, GM for Worldwide Communications and Media at Microsoft.

Amdocs combines NCSO with Red Hat OpenStack in telco cloud play

openstack logoCustomer 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