For its latest in a spate of partnerships, EMC today says it has validated Versa’s FlexVNF software with EMC’s network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) platform.

EMC’s platform with Versa’s software creates “a virtual CPE in a rack,” according to Mark Weiner, Versa’s chief marketing officer. Each Versa virtual network function (VNF) supports up to 250 customer organizations, as opposed to having to deploy individual aggregation devices for each customer. This can really cut down on the hardware needed to deploy managed services.

Versa’s virtualized network and security functions can be deployed on commodity x86 hardware in service provider points of presence or data centers. The Versa-EMC combination supports both VMware and OpenStack environments.

Hardware abstraction and orchestration are provided by EMC’s NFVi manager software, and storage is provided through EMC’s ScaleIO.

VNFs are provided by Versa’s FlexVNF software and include a range of functions including routing, VPN, carrier-grade network address translation, a next-gen firewall, URL filtering, and antivirus and intrusion prevention services. The VNFs include integrated service chaining.

EMC is on a roll, establishing partnerships within its new Telecom Modernization group. It recently announced two partnerships related to its analytics platform: one with Cellwize and one with Affirmed Networks.