HP and Wind River are teaming up to deliver carrier-grade network functions virtualization (NFV) capabilities within HP Helion OpenStack, with the aim of offering service providers an open source cloud platform that can meet the requirements put on them as they move toward NFV environments.

The partnership was announced today at the OpenStack Summit in Paris.

Both companies bring their own areas of expertise to the table, with HP well-versed in OpenStack deployments, and Wind River a competitor in the carrier market. With Wind River also already a part of HP's OpenNFV program, the collaboration seemed like a natural fit.

OpenNFV launched at Mobile World Congress last year and has HP providing a framework and some of the technology necessary for networks to transition to NFV. It includes a partner program to get other organizations certified and able to provide open source products. OpenNFV has more than 20 active proofs of concept (PoCs) with several vendors to get the technology moving forward and available for use, says Saar Gillai, senior vice president and COO of HP Cloud and general manager of HP's NFV division.

Gillai says OpenStack has become the environment of choice for NFV. With Wind River's work with carrier-grade Linux and kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor, the partnership can provide service providers with the carrier grade, open products they need, he says.

Charlie Ashton, senior director of business development at Wind River, says the collaboration will also answer the three critical needs of service providers. First, they will get access to all of the elements necessary to speed up their deployment. Second, carrier-grade reliability will protect top line revenues. And lastly, the partnership will offer a chance for service providers to minimize opex, giving them the chance to maximize the number of subscribers they can support on a given server blade.

Both HP and Wind River say the key element to this collaboration is the speed it offers service providers. Gillai says that by getting services to customers faster, service providers can experience the benefits of NFV sooner and transition to a virtualized environment that better suits demand.

HP Helion OpenStack products with carrier-grade features will be available in 2015.