The European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) today released the latest version of its Open Source MANO (OSM) project. OSM is an operator-led group working on delivering an open source management and network orchestration (MANO) stack that aligns with ETSI NFV models. The latest code release from the group, Release FIVE, extends its capabilities to help operators toward 5G deployments.

OSM released its first code in 2016 and now has around 110 organizations, namely vendors and operators, participating in the project. This includes Accedian, Aricent, Oracle, Saudi Telecom, University College London — which are just a handful of the 18 that have joined in the last six months.

The group is developing a technology-agnostic stack that is enabled by a plugin framework. The newest code release furthers this framework toward transport technologies and maintains the project’s consistent modeling of NFV.

Release Five extends OSM’s orchestration capability to transport networks and physical and hybrid network elements. Previously, it was limited to virtual domains. Now, OSM is based on a microservices architecture to make it a viable choice for 5G use cases, as well as distributed and edge deployments, and Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) offerings.

Specifically, the release added support for 5G network slicing. This is expected to be an essential part of the 5G network architecture as it will enable operators to provide portions of their networks for specific and varied use cases.

OSM also enabled the creation of inter-data center connections across heterogeneous WANs, and added support for policy-based closed loop control, new monitoring functions, virtual network functions metric collection, physical and hybrid network functions, and additional support for service function chaining (SFC). SFC refers to the use of SDN capabilities to create a service chain of network services.

Previous releases from the group added capabilities for monitoring and closed-loop operations as well as architectural improvements. Release Four reduced its RAM consumption by up to 75 percent and aligned its interface with other ETSI NFV work to make OSM more open and easier to integrate with pluggable modules and external systems.

In addition to ETSI, a number of other groups are working on open source technology and standards for MANO.

One example is Open Baton, which is led by two groups based in Germany. Open Baton has been working on MANO code rather than building a community and marketing its product. Where OSM works with vendors and operators in the ETSI and Linux communities, Open Baton relies on research institutes. And while Open Baton has yet to work with either of the MANO groups, it told SDxCentral last year that it was considering collaboration in the future.