Billing and OSS company Amdocs said today that it will help telecom operators and cloud developers deploy AT&T’s Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) platform and build their own network services. The company will also help market ECOMP globally to other service providers.

AT&T announced earlier this month that it was releasing its software-defined networking (SDN) platform as open source code, and that it was working with the Linux Foundation to develop an organization around the project.

According to Chris Rice, VP of advanced technologies and architecture at AT&T Labs, Amdocs is a natural partner for ECOMP because the two companies are aligned on what they believe needs to happen with the virtual network function (VNF) orchestration layer.

“Amdocs is helping drive ECOMP as an industry standard,” Rice said during a media briefing to announce the alliance. “Service providers will benefit by [having] simplified virtual network elements. This will drive capital savings and improved service agility.”

Although ECOMP is open source, Amdocs says that an integrator is necessary because of ECOMP’s complexity. “We are talking about managing physical, virtual, and multicomponent software,” says Anthony Goonetilleke, division president at Amdocs.

Interestingly, when asked if Amdocs would supply code to the project, Goonetilleke said the company would do it. “Amdocs is changing. The industry is changing.”

Amdocs won’t be the exclusive integrator for ECOMP. Rice says that other integrators are welcome to participate in the program. He adds that ECOMP is looking for participation from cloud providers, software providers, and more. “We welcome all those folks to be part of the process,” he says.

AT&T isn't elaborating on which aspects of ECOMP will be open-sourced. “We are working with Linux on what will be open sourced,” Rice says. “I can’t speak definitely about that today. The project is massive. We want to make sure we get other people’s input.”