Stratus Technologies announced a new release of its cloud solution for network functions. This solution provides Telcos with uncompromised reliability and service continuity for any application running in their cloud environment. Stratus’ unique software-centric approach is application transparent; meaning stateful fault tolerance with geo-redundancy can be achieved in Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) infrastructures without costly and complex modifications to Virtual Network Functions (VNFs).

“More and more service providers are moving to NFV and SDN to increase the flexibility of their networks and decrease costs, but trepidation over availability and resiliency remains, especially when it comes to commodity servers,” said Ali Kafel, senior director and head of telecommunications business development, Stratus Technologies. “At Stratus we are eliminating the availability concern so that Telcos can embrace this transformation of the Telco network and remain competitive in the ultra-high stakes voice, bandwidth and video services market.”

The KVM and OpenStack based solution provides service providers with service continuity and carrier- grade reliability along with selectable levels of availability. With this capability and a design based on commercial off-the-shelf hardware and open source software, the Stratus Cloud Solution for Network Functions is designed to easily integrate into service provider networks and support NFV proof of concepts (PoCs), trials and production deployments. Responding to the need to maximize efficiency and utilization in the Telco network, the solution allows utilization levels of 80% to 90% (as opposed to the current sub- 50%) while providing uncompromised reliability at a fraction of the cost of traditional approaches.

In addition to initial charter PoCs, Stratus has confirmed a PoC for the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Designed to alleviate one of the main service provider concerns as they virtualize their networks, this availability management and stateful fault tolerance ETSI NFV PoC, sponsored by multiple Telcos, will protect VNFs in a variety of availability modes including Fault Tolerant (FT), High Availability (HA), and General Availability (GA). By addressing this major barrier, Stratus is looking to accelerate the transition of Telco networks to NFV and SDN.

Stratus will be demonstrating the ETSI PoC for the first time at the NFV World Congress from May 6 to 8 in the Silicon Valley floor, DoubleTree Hilton, San Jose, California and will also be speaking on Day 3 of the Congress. Stratus also invites you to register for an informational webinar on this topic with industry experts on May 26, 2015 at 2pm EDT.

Supporting quotes

Tadashi Ito, Vice President, Head of NTT Network Service Systems Laboratories, NTT

 “NTT R&D are proposing a new server architecture “MAGONIA”, which offers a highly reliable, scalable and proven platform that can be shared by a wide range of applications to realize agility in the development of services. We had already proven our key platform technologies and now we are standardizing the requirements to implement reliability models in ETSI ISG NFV. Stratus has a long history of success offering fault tolerance with traditional hardware and they provide a common platform that delivers high reliability to multiple applications. NTT R&D are promoting open R&D collaboration with other players. We expect that features of both technologies will create synergy and enable efficient service development in NFV environments.”

Michael Howard, Senior Research Director for Carrier Networks, IHS/Infonetics

“We expect the global carrier SDN and NFV markets to grow to more than $11 billion in 2018, up from less than $500 million in 2013,” said Michael Howard, senior research director for carrier networks, IHS/Infonetics. “In my conversations with operators worldwide, stateful fault tolerance is crucial to the success of their commercial deployments. What Stratus does differently that we haven’t seen elsewhere is provide geo-redundancy and several selectable levels of availability with no changes to VNFs, which should make adopting OpenStack NFV infrastructures much easier for operators.”