HPE launches Service Director designed to simplify NFV management

By Business Cloud News

HPE claims its new Service Director system could put comms service providers back in control of their increasingly complex hybrid computing estates,” reports BCN. It aims to achieve this by simplifying the management of network function virtualisation (NFV).

HPE claims that Service Director will automate many of the new management tasks that have been created by the expanding cloud environment and provide a simpler system of navigation for all the different functions that have to be monitored and managed. The new offering builds on HPE NFV Director’s management and orchestration (MANO) capacity and bridges existing physical and new virtualized environments.

As virtualisation has expanded it has extended beyond the remit of current generations of operations support systems (OSS) and the coexistence of physical and virtual infrastructure can introduce obstacles that slow the CSPs down, HPE said. It claims the Service Director will help CSPs roll out new offerings quicker.

The main benefits of the system outlined by HPE are automation of operations, shared information, flexible modelling of services and openness. With a single view of the entire infrastructure and dynamic service descriptors, it aims to make it easier to spot problems and create new services, HPE claims. As an open system the Service Director platform will have interfaces to any new third party software defined networking controllers and policy engines.

Since there is no such thing as a green field NFV set up there has to be a system to rationalise the legacy systems and the new virtualised estate, said David Sliter, HPE’s comms VP. “Service Director is a transformational change in the relationship between assurance and fulfilment, allowing the OSS resource pool to be treated, automated and managed as a service,” said Sliter.

The telecoms industry needs an omnipotent service orchestration system that can span every existing NFV MANO and OSS silo, according to analyst Caroline Chappell, principal analyst of NFV and Cloud for Heavy Reading. A model-driven, fulfilment and assurance system like Service Director could speed up the delivery of services across a hybrid physical and virtual network, Chappell said.

HPE Service Director 1.0 will be available worldwide in early 2016, with options for pre-configured systems to address specific use cases as extensions to the base product, starting with HPE Service Director for vCPE 1.0.