Press Releases

Enea Launches World’s First OPNFV Pharos Lab for ARM-based Network Equipment

Specialized Pharos Lab Established for OPNFV Community Interoperability Testing on Energy-Efficient ARM-Based Servers

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, November 10, 2015 – Enea® (NASDAQ OMX Nordic:ENEA) today announced the world’s first Pharos Lab for OPNFV networking developers to validate applications on workload-optimized ARM®-based servers.

The Pharos project is an OPNFV initiative towards a geographically and technically diverse lab infrastructure, hosted by the OPNFV community members and the Linux Foundation. The ARM architecture is expected to play a foundational role in next-generation networks based on flexible, scalable and highly-integrated Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). The Pharos Labs provide the community with a head start on early ARM-based server development work and lay the groundwork for OPNFV Brahmaputra and future related software releases.

“Supporting ARM-based hardware and the OPNFV project is central in our strategic direction as a company”, said Daniel Forsgren, Senior Vice President Product Management, Enea. “Opening up the world’s first ARM Pharos lab offers tremendous value to the ecosystem as it now has a compliant environment for OPNFV testing and validation on ARM-based equipment.”

“By pioneering the world’s first ARM-based OPNFV Pharos community lab initiative, Enea has opened up a more diverse ecosystem for equipment providers, operators and ISVs tasked with creating next-generation networks,” said Bob Monkman, marketing manager, enterprise segment, ARM. “Together, Enea and the ARM ecosystem will deliver choice and a uniquely compelling value proposition for energy-efficient and workload–optimized infrastructure in the NFV space.”

"We are thrilled that Enea is joining the Pharos lab community and increasing the variety of architectures available for testing in our federated testing environment," said Heather Kirksey, Director, OPNFV. "The goal of the OPNFV Pharos testbed project requires a collection of diverse labs and a broad range of hardware, which helps ensure OPNFV’s applicability across architectures, environments and vendors. Inclusion of ARM-based servers in these testing environments helps further this goal and benefits the larger ecosystem."

“Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM) is pleased to partner with ARM and Enea to support the Pharos Lab initiative at Enea, working together we have been able to bring up key OPNFV subcomponents on our ThunderX™ platforms that are required for the most demanding NFV software applications,” said Larry Wikelius, Director of Ecosystems and Partner Enablement at Cavium. “Cavium’s 48 core ARMv8 based ThunderX Networking (NT) sku of Workload Optimized Processors with dual socket support, provides a cost effective NFV platform optimized with a range of acceleration for packet processing, crypto and DPI.”

“Offering industry-leading multicore processors based on ARM technology, Freescale® is committed to creating a vibrant, open and competitive NFV ecosystem,” said Sam Fuller, Director of Strategy for Freescale’s Digital Networking group. “Enea's OPNFV Pharos Lab will provide an important proving ground to demonstrate the ability of ARM processor technology to meet the demanding functional and interoperability requirements carriers have set for NFV.”

The Enea Pharos lab is hosted at Enea’s headquarters in Kista, Sweden, and is operational from mid-November.

NOTES TO EDITORS

About COSNOS by Enea

Enea’s strategic direction is towards the Carrier-Grade Open Source Network Operating System (COSNOS), and to be a leading provider of software platforms for next generation network nodes and functions. ARM and the OPNFV architecture is a given component in those platforms, and Enea is committed to working together with customers and leading hardware vendors as a key contributor in relevant open source communities. Please visit https://www.enea.com/cosnos and read the recent COSNOS press release at https://www.enea.com/about-us/Press/Press-releases/Press-release/?item=1008429.

About Open Platform for Network Function Virtualization (OPNFV)

OPNFV is an open source project delivering a carrier-grade, integrated NFV reference platform. Its aim is to move the industry toward a standardized framework supporting the flexibility, automation and scalability needed for future network infrastructure. Please visit https://www.opnfv.org to discover more.

About the Pharos Project

The Pharos project specifies an OPNFV community lab infrastructure that is geographically and technically diverse, hosted by community members and the Linux Foundation. The Pharos specification defines a "compliant" test environment including lab management, testing tools; and lab process and support plan. Pharos will provide visibility of lab capabilities and their usage. Please visit https://wiki.opnfv.org/pharos for further details.