Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced new updates to its network functions virtualization (NFV) portfolio today, including new integrations with the Red Hat OpenStack Platform.

The goal is to give service providers the tools to speed up NFV deployments and build personalized customer services.

Part of the announcement includes what HPE calls a virtual network function (VNF) Onboarding Factory Service, a program focused on reducing the time and risk involved in onboarding new VNFs and linking them into network services.

The service also uses HPE’s NFV-Vital (virtualization impact on throughput and load) framework to examine the performance of different types of VNFs to ensure that it meets specific customer needs.

To help content providers add additional headend appliances for their customers, HPE announced its Virtual Headend Manager (vHM). This is meant to help customers quickly deploy new channels and integrate with new technologies like virtual media functions.

HPE also launched subscriber data management (SDM) in order to consolidate and manage subscriber and device data across different networks. This allows operators to avoid data duplication and inconsistencies in mission-critical environments.

These updates and enhancements are expected to be available starting in March.

HPE and Red Hat are working together to help speed the deployment of NFV systems. HPE plans to provide its NFV system and integrate it with the Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Ceph storage for service providers to create HPE NFV System 1.4.

The system is a pre-integrated bundle of hardware and software that is designed as building blocks for providers to start small and scale out as needed.

The focus is to encourage service providers to adopt OpenStack — either through HPE’s Helion OpenStack Carrier Grade or Red Hat’s OpenStack platform — as an open source foundation for NFV deployments.

Red Hat will also offer its customers access to HPE’s VNF Onboarding Services and the use of HPE OpenNFV Labs for VNF validation.