Just a year after launching its network functions virtualization (NFV) platform targeted at carriers, HP has signed on Telefónica as one of the biggest confirmed customers for OpenNFV.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the deal is financially “meaningful," an HP executive tells SDxCentral.

“This is not a PowerPoint deal,” says Saar Gillai, senior vice president and general manager of the HP NFV group. "It's meaningful both as a validation of the platform and from a financial perspective."

The deal positions HP as technology provider and systems integrator for Telefónica's infrastructure virtualization initiative, called Unica. Spain-based Telefónica is among the largest mobile operators in the world, claiming 249 million subscribers.

Announced at last year's Mobile World Congress, HP OpenNFV is carrier-grade NFV deployment platform designed for interoperability. Consisting of hardware and software (which Gillai tells us can be deployed separately), the stack is build on open standards and aims to serve as a multivendor marketplace for NFV apps, allowing carriers to pick and choose among suppliers.

"A key part of the OpenNFV program is the open architecture," says Gillai. "The whole idea of NFV is to break the silos and move to a horizontal play, and have folks get the relevant applications from the vendors of their choice."

The program now claims more than 100 partners participating in the OpenNFV testing lab, which allows vendors to test functionality and interoperability of NFV apps on the platform.

"We launched this program a year ago and now we have significant proof points," Gillai says. "We're seeing a lot of traction."