In announcing its first software release today, the OPEN-O Project is again stressing its perceived advantage over other open source MANO efforts: the inclusion of legacy networks in its network orchestration plans. (See It's Showtime for OPEN-O and OPEN-O Issues First Software Release.)

Details of that first release, called SUN, were limited, other than the fact it contains two million lines of code and a virtual CPE use case. But OPEN-Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O) 's release and comments by its Executive Director Marc Cohn clearly stress the idea of combining management of legacy physical network functions and services with virtualized functions. (See OPEN-O Going Beyond the MANO.)

In fact, a discussion at last week's Light Reading event in London, OSS in the Era of SDN& NFV, revealed one of the few cracks in the otherwise amiable relationship between OPEN-O and Open Source MANO Community (OSM) over this very topic. Speaking on a panel that included Antonio Elizondo, head of virtualization strategy for Telefónica and an OSM representative, OPEN-O's Cohn bristled at the suggestion that both open source groups are addressing the gap between so-called brownfield or existing networks and the newer virtualized technologies, insisting his group is going much further down that path.

Elizondo had responded to an audience question on the topic by pointing to his organization's work with a TM Forum Catalyst project on defining VNFs from a traditional OSS/BSS perspective.

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Cohn said later OPEN-O is being much more thorough in laying out how real-world use cases will draw on both legacy and virtualized elements and explaining how the two are managed together.

The software release is being announced at the MEF event in Baltimore this week, where OPEN-O also will be highlighting its collaboration with MEF's Open Lifecycle Services Orchestration project.

In announcing SUN, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. 's Chris Donley, OPEN-O's technical steering committee chair, used the phrase "any service over any network" to describe the group's approach. The first release comes five months after OPEN-O formally organized and eight months after it was announced,

One of OPEN-O's clear goals is to expand its service provider membership base. Today, three of its 13 members are network operators: China Mobile, China Telecom and Hong Kong Telecom (HKT).

OPEN-O also announced that Xiaodong Duan, director of the Department of Network Technology for China Mobile Research Institute, was elected the Chair of the OPEN-O Governing Board.

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