By Heather Kirksey, VP, Community & Ecosystem Development, the Linux Foundation
I am profoundly excited to announce that OPNFV and CNTT have chosen to come together as one organization. We have always been two sides of the same coin: CNTT focuses on requirements and industry alignment from an architecture and specification perspective, whilst OPNFV implements reference implementations, creates test frameworks and testing tools, and works upstream with communities to fill necessary technology gaps.
We intend to create our future together as equals across both communities and across our varying skillsets. We have learned that the valuable work that CNTT does requires a long-term and formal home in LFN, and we have also learned that the work we do together is interrelated. We need a combination of strong requirements to define a compliance and verification framework, and we need strong test architecture, labs, and automated test cases to make those end-to-end system requirements reality. As we look forward to 5G, we commit to building the necessary tooling and integration processes to enable cloud native telecom to flourish.
We do not do this alone. CNTT started as a joint task force between the Linux Foundation and GSMA, and GSMA will continue to be a strong partner and the home of our Reference Model documents. We also do this in partnership with CNCF, whose cloud native technologies and help in defining cloud native telecom through the Telecom User Group (https://www.cncf.io/telecom-user-group/) is invaluable.
It is particularly exciting to share this news just 2 days before OPNFV’s 6th birthday, and on CNTT’s 18 month anniversary. Sometimes it feels like the stars align; today our industry aligns. Come join us in the Meld Zone: https://wiki.lfnetworking.org/display/MZ/Meld+Zone
