NEC and Netcracker Unveil Ecosystem 2.0 That Extends Beyond VNF Onboarding to Fully Commercialized Services

NEC Corporation and Netcracker Technology today unveiled their Ecosystem 2.0, the next evolution in partner collaboration that goes beyond VNF onboarding to solve operational and monetization issues for service providers that result in a digital marketplace of commercially ready services.

Service providers demand the flexibility to select and work with multiple partners when creating and running virtualized services. Ecosystem 2.0 facilitates this by creating deep relationships with our partners, including Juniper, Metaswitch and Versa Networks, and many others, to cover both the technical and commercial aspects of providing a large and constantly growing ecosystem library of commercially ready virtualized services.

VNF onboarding is an important first step in the process but only covers one piece of what it takes to get vendor VNFs ready for commercial service. In addition to seamless VNF onboarding, Ecosystem 2.0 offers an end-to-end service creation environment, including the definition, design, deployment, lifecycle management, BSS/OSS integration and assurance phases. Commercial agreements include full partner and license management together with advanced revenue share models, enabling monetization across multiple parties in the value chain. With Ecosystem 2.0, service providers and partners benefit from a real-time collaboration environment to assess and improve their services and VNFs.

Ecosystem 2.0 helps service providers accelerate revenue growth by enabling:

·         Faster time-to-market with access to commercially ready services.

·         Continuous service innovation with rapid onboarding, service design and new software asset commercialization. 

·         The use of pre-integrated, best-of-breed VNFs with minimal risk.

With Ecosystem 2.0, our partners can:

·         Certify their VNFs as commercially ready, working with the market-leading service orchestration, service design and business management applications of NEC/Netcracker's Agile Virtualization Platform and Practice (AVP).

·         Enable seamless onboarding with access to an advanced partner portal with a dashboard showing VNFs statistics and feedback from service providers. 

“We are excited to announce NEC/Netcracker’s Ecosystem 2.0, which is focused on the service provider market and is part of the broader NEC SDN Partner Space, spanning telecom markets and enterprises,” said Shigeru Okuya, General Manager, SDN/NFV Division at NEC Corporation. “This new partner collaboration goes beyond VNF onboarding to focus on operationalizing services and monetization through deep partner relationships.”

"NEC/Netcracker’s Ecosystem 2.0 is an important next step for the industry, enabling new partner collaboration significantly beyond basic onboarding and giving service providers the tools they need to monetize virtualized services comprised of components from a large and growing range of vendors," said Fran Heeran, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Netcracker's SDN/NFV Business Unit. "Bringing all of our partners together into a unified environment ensures that our customers can leverage best-of-breed solutions with minimal risk to expand their reach into new markets and generate new revenue." 

"Juniper and NEC/Netcracker have a history of deep collaboration in developing joint virtualization solutions and we are pleased to participate in the Ecosystem 2.0 initiative," said Brian Rosenberg, Corporate Vice President of Partners and Alliances at Juniper Networks. "Juniper supports NEC/Netcracker's Ecosystem 2.0 as it enables service providers to leverage open, best-of-breed solutions as they transform their networks."

"Metaswitch is excited to be part of NEC/Netcracker's Ecosystem 2.0, which helps service providers address challenges in commercializing virtualized cloud services," said Shriraj Gaglani, EVP of Business Development at Metaswitch. "As recognized leaders in VNF onboarding, we are keen to work with partners like Netcracker to create commercially ready virtual core network services and help service providers significantly reduce time-to-market."

Source: NEC and Netcracker media announcement