UBIqube announced this morning that the Korean Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has chosen its MSActivator framework as the backbone of a next-generation service orchestrator.

The development project has ETSI trying to build a future-proof management and orchestration (MANO) stack for NFV, one that fits the blueprint set forth by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). The result could be a more agile vendor on-boarding process in NFV, one that's closer to a DevOps style of operations.

MANO is the piece in the ETSI diagram that would provision and interact with virtual network functions (VNFs) from any industry players. A multivendor deployment lacking a MANO answer might require that each vendor be configured with its own management system, creating a vendor-specific slice within the stack, says Nabil Souli, UBIqube CEO.

“The MSActivator is actually a framework with an SDK to customize every module,” says Souli. “ETRI’s staff has the liberty to add IP [intellectual property] to the platform by customizing it to different use cases they investigate. It is a perfect fit for the evolving use cases of a research lab which critically needs DevOps-ready solutions.”

In the wake of Cisco’s acquisition of Tail-f, UBIqube has touted itself as an independent option for multivendor orchestration. The startup's announced customers include NTT and Orange.