The recently launched Linux Foundation Europe is spearheading Project Sylva that is geared toward constructing a production-grade telecommunications cloud stack focused on the need of European telecommunication operators.

The newly unveiled initiative includes European-based telecom giants Telefónica, Telecom Italia, Orange, Vodafone, and Deutsche Telekom along with vendors Ericsson and Nokia. It’s targeted at providing a common cloud software framework and reference implementation designed to consolidate a cloud infrastructure layer for telecommunication and edge services.

It's also tasked with taking into account European Union (EU)-specific privacy, security, and energy efficiency requirements. However, project leaders are also looking to expand its reach and scale to entities outside of the EU.

The project’s specific goals include a cloud software framework that prioritizes requirements and develops platforms to be integrated into existing open source components that are “production-grade” and can be leveraged "within commercial products.” This also includes a reference implementation and validation program to accelerate broader adoption.

It also borrows from already established Linux Foundation telecommunication-focused projects like Kubernetes, the somewhat related Nephio 5G automation project, the Anuket infrastructure reference program, and LF Edge.

[caption id="attachment_124155" align="aligncenter" width="618"] Source: Linux Foundation Europe[/caption]

These are all geared toward providing some level of curation for telecom operators as they look to deploy disaggregated cloud-based platforms like open radio access network (RAN), virtualized RAN (vRAN), and network edge platforms.

“The telco cloud ecosystem today is fragmented and slowing down our operational model transformation,” Laurent Leboucher, group CTO and SVP for Orange Innovation Networks, succinctly noted in a supporting quote for Project Sylva. “Despite a transition to cloud-native technologies, a real interoperability between workloads and platforms remains a challenge. Indeed, operators have to deal with a lot of vertical solutions that are different for each vendor, leading to operational complexity, lack of scalability, and high costs. Sylva, by providing a homogenous telco cloud framework for the entire industry, should help all the ecosystem to use a common technology, which will be interoperable, flexible, and easy to operate.”

The Linux Foundation launched its European effort in September, combining an initial dozen organizations into a group focused on boosting open source efforts in Europe. That group is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, and headed by Gabriele Columbro, who also remains executive director of the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS).

“[Project Sylva] directly delivers our vision to accelerate the impact that European-centric collaborations can have in the global ecosystem,” Columbro noted in a statement. “Sylva is the perfect example of the high-impact open collaborations we see flourishing under LF Europe, as it brings together leading telco stakeholders to deliver innovation to address a concrete industrywide business challenge.”