Scrappy, Dublin-based startup UBIqube has landed a nice research-and-development gig in South Korea. The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has picked UBIqube’s MSActivator Framework as a technology for its network test bed.

UBIqube's MSActivator software is part service development platform, part orchestration tool. Company officials say the MSActivator platform will enable ETRI to build a more flexible service orchestration platform that will enable it to quickly integrate new vendors, streamline service integration, and reduce service turn-up time.

This technology attacks a next-generation problem for telcos: How do they become more flexible and act more like cloud service providers by using software to quickly develop new services in a “DevOps” style program?

ETRI engineers say the tool will be used to expand Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) orchestration and implement NFV using the ETSI MANO specifications. MSActivator allows a service provider to build a “service mashup interface” on the fly.

ETRI is a non-profit, government-funded research organization with a 25-year history of developing telecommunication technologies, including: TDX-Exchange, High Density Semiconductor Microchips, Mini-Super Computer (TiCOM), and Digital Mobile Telecommunication System (CDMA).

Bhum-Cheol Lee, Director of ETRI's Network Computing Convergence Research Section, said in the press release:

UBIqube's commercial production experience with world's top carriers in the NFV space and its unique capability of handling standardized as well as non-standardized devices would bring a great value to Korean and Global telecom markets. ETRI's development effort for Distributed Cloud OS and Multi-domain MANO will benefit from the collaboration and both parties will co-market the project results in the global market.

UBIqube’s MSActivator Framework is also being used by NTT and several other leading PTTs to deliver services.

UBIqube can be grouped into a category of companies pursuing higher-level integration and orchestration of communications services known as Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO), which helps deliver, manage, and monitor new telecom services based on open standards.