ADVA Optical Networking today announced a new strategic division – Ensemble – based on the network functions virtualization (NFV) portfolio of the recently acquired Overture Networks.

The Ensemble team will be led by James Buchanan as general manager, along with Overture’s co-founder Prayson Pate as CTO.

The new Ensemble division combines Overture’s NFV portfolio with ADVA’s hardware, software, and engineering capabilities. With this, ADVA can deliver Ethernet-based cloud services in a hybrid or NFV pure-play environment.

In terms of hardware, Pate says, “We are open. We can host on COTS servers. We also have a hardened server and a hybrid network interface device (NID). We expect customers will use a mix. We do not require that they get the servers from us.”

Prior to its acquisition by ADVA, Overture already had a list of partners that had integrated their virtual network functions (VNFs) with Overture. These VNFs include routing, firewalls, DPI, and vIMS, among others.

Pate gives an example of how the Ensemble group’s offering can be used by a service provider. He says Masergy, which does software-defined networking (SDN), wanted to provide managed services that didn’t involve multiple boxes at a customer’s premises. With Ensemble, Masergy was able to replace a stack of boxes with a single server that does Carrier Ethernet, firewall, and routing via VNFs.

“This is the first place you see Carrier Ethernet and NFV replacing boxes,” he says.