Calix and Radisys are teaming up on what they are calling the industry's first end-to-end cloud-based Residential CORD platform, uniting Calix broadband access and virtualization skills with Radisys data center and systems integration expertise and the CORD hardware and software specs into one package. (See Calix, Radisys Team Up on CORD Platform.)

This isn't the first commercial hardened version of CORD -- Ciena launched that last year -- but it is a platform now in active trials with Tier 1 carriers and headed for likely commercial deployment in 2018, says Joseph Sulistyo, senior director of product management with Radisys. He tells Light Reading in an interview that the partners are in talks with about a dozen Tier 1 operators globally and have active trials with about half that number.

The CORD platform includes the Calix AXOS E9-2 Intelligent Edge System, which features Calix's new AXOS OFx Connector with open source virtual optical line terminal-hardware extraction integration software as well as 10-Gbit/s passive optical network converged fiber access, supporting NG-PON2 and XGS-PON. That is being combined with Radisys' DCEngine platform, based on Open Compute Project , and the CORD open hardware and software.

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"We are actively moving in as a direct integrator or solution provider to Tier 1 carriers," Sulistyo says, noting Radisys's move away from being a behind-the-scenes player with telecom equipment manufacturers. "CORD is a great performer for us to introduce our solution."

Radisys is a contributor to OCP and began working with CORD two years ago, first as a collaborator and then as a funding member and board member. The company has been working with Calix for the last six to eight months.

Calix, long thought of as a broadband access player for smaller and rural telcos, has been changing its approach as well, developing software skills to create software-defined access and competing for Tier 1 business such as Verizon's.

Together the partners are bringing a commercially deployable R-CORD platform to market for operators looking for vendor support of their open source deployments -- which most are -- for things such as software updates and professional services to troubleshoot problems going forward.

Radisys worked with Verizon on the production sites for its NFV-SDN platforms, providing its FlowEngine system. (See Verizon NFV Plan Pushes OpenStack Forward.)

Sulistyo says Radisys and Calix are conducting field trials for the platform, which is what leads him to predict commercial deployments in 2018, at least for R-CORD. "We expect there will be a handful of them, one or two in North America, one or two in Europe and one or two in Asia," he comments.

The companies will be demonstrating their solution next week at the Big Communications Event in Austin, TX.

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading

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