Published: June 21st, 2016

Ottawa, Canada, June 22, 2016 – CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (NGN), a leader in the rapid commercialization of NGN products, applications and services, today announced the launch of Canada’s first OPNFV ‘Pharos’ community test lab at its headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario.

Spanning North America, Europe and Asia, Pharos is a global Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) community of test labs designed for hosting continuous integration, deployment, and testing of the OPNFV platform. The latest addition to this world-class infrastructure, CENGN’s Pharos Lab will provide NGN technology developers with facilitated access to leading-edge test resources and expertise around the world. These capabilities will equip NGN firms with a technical advantage, and increase Canada’s contribution to the global NGN industry.

Leveraging Kontron’s SYMKLOUD, a scalable SDN/NFV-enabled converged infrastructure platform, the CENGN Pharos Lab will provide a powerful suite of multi-vendor test resources that would typically exceed the reach of many developers. It will directly support OPNFV applicability across multiple architectures, environments and vendors, and drive the development of more robust and interoperable technology releases.

NFV leaders across the communications industry can leverage the CENGN Pharos Lab to test the interoperability of NGN products and solutions, and increase Canada’s overall NFV capabilities. Given the breadth of available test resources, the lab is also attracting new multinationals and SMEs that develop NGN technology to CENGN, expanding its member community.

In support of its objective to develop Canada’s future NGN leaders, CENGN will also employ interns sponsored by OPNFV to work on the Pharos Lab project. This will not only put more resources toward the project, it will also provide students with valuable hands-on experience in the development of next-generation technologies. This will enable young and aspiring engineers from Canadian universities and colleges to acquire the skills and technical knowledge sought by leading-edge telecommunications companies.

“The CENGN Pharos Lab will provide developers with resources for testing and hardening NFV technologies,” said Ritch Dusome, President and CEO of CENGN. “We are proud to facilitate Canada’s contribution to the global community, and help our member companies benefit from the OPNFV’s global collection of NFV expertise and resources. These capabilities will accelerate the commercialization of new Canadian NGN technologies that directly address global market demand.”

“As OPNFV’s first Associate Member, CENGN’s work to pioneer NFV acceleration within Canada and the industry at large are commendable,” said Heather Kirksey, Director of OPNFV. “Investments in the Pharos Lab will aid the project’s growth, and the focus on recruiting participation from the best and brightest from academia will help ensure the long-term health of the community.”

“With its own Canadian presence, it was only natural for Kontron to assist CENGN with this unique opportunity,” said Benoit Robert, Strategy and Marketing, Communications BU at Kontron. “The success of OPNFV and the test work of the Pharos Lab community are important to Kontron. A positive outcome for a standard open source platform can only speed up the commercial development of additional NFV infrastructure reference solutions with its ecosystem partners and the end-user community at large.”

CENGN joined OPNFV as the first Associate Member in 2015, facilitating its participation in many OPNFV projects including Pharos, JOID, and StorPerf.

About CENGN – Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks
Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN), is a consortium of industry, academic and research leaders dedicated to accelerating the commercialization of next generation communications solutions. CENGN’s internationally recognized testing centre employs interoperability between multiple software and hardware products. Our state of the art physical and virtual multi-vendor, test, certification and validation platform provides a unique environment to commercialize advanced products, applications and services. Members include: Allstream, Cisco, EWA Canada, EXFO, Fujitsu, Invest Ottawa, Juniper, Nokia, Rogers, TELUS, Viavi and Wind River. For more information, visit www.cengn.com

Additional Resources
CENGN Pharos Community Lab
The OPNFV Project
OPNFV Pharos Labs

CENGN Media Contact
Sonya Shorey
Communications Strategist
Cell: 613.851.9416
sonyashorey@rogers.com

About the Author

CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, drives technology innovation and industry growth through our testbed, technical expertise, talent development, and partner ecosystem. Through our projects, CENGN enables small and medium Canadian Enterprises to test and validate promising technologies, removing barriers to product commercialization and accelerating market growth.

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