Leading Japanese Telecom Solution Vendors, NEC, NTT, Fujitsu and Hitachi are collaborating on the “O3 (O Three) Project”, a technology development initiative to enable Software-Defined Networking (SDN) compatibility for wide area networks, including platforms for integrating and managing different wide area network infrastructure and general-purpose network control applications. The project which was launched in June 2013 and developed through the “Open Innovation Over Network Platforms” enables operators to quickly and easily provide virtual networks that combine optical, packet, wireless and other features.
Source NEC- http://www.nec.com/en/press/201309/images/1701-01-01.pdf
According to a statement, the project will allow telecommunications carriers to reduce the time to design, construct and change networks in response to service providers’ requests by approximately 90% compared to the conventional methods, by enabling coordination between network devices in different layers. A unified network information database and resource allocation technology will enable easy connection between the lower layer optical network to packet transport network at the upper layer, as well as coordination among related devices. In addition, fast provision of network services will be made possible by automatic allocation of resources, including band frequency needed in the optical and packet layers, based on the network information database.
The O3 Project brings common control and management of multiple networks by capitalizing on the network information database. This is especially important for building new virtual network that needs to be compatible with an existing large-scale network and to support the development of virtualization-compatible network devices.
This project aims to commercialize results of research and development on network virtualization by March 2016 with some of the research and development results to be made public this year.
