Samsung Electronics and Hewlett Packard Enterprise today announced a partnership that will provide carriers with integrated network functions virtualization (NFV) infrastructure and virtual network functions (VNF) solutions. This kind of collaboration is critical to both carriers and customers increasingly looking to implement pre-tested and integrated multi-vendor solutions based on an open architecture.

The new partnership brings together two best-in-class solutions, merging Samsung’s carrier network and HPE’s IT telecommunications expertise. Together, the solutions will help carriers accelerate their transformation from networks built on monolithic, proprietary appliances to more agile cloud-based networks enabled by NFV.

“Samsung is confident in maintaining its stance as a pioneer in delivering advanced technologies required to lead the next generation market, like open ecosystem based NFV,” said Woojune Kim, Vice President and Head of Strategy Group in Next Generation communication Team at Samsung Electronics. “We see profound potential in HPE OpenNFV Partner Program to ensure a variety of choices for carriers in selecting NFV providers, along with the commercially-proven NFV solution we developed in 2015.”

In making this announcement, Samsung joins the HPE OpenNFV Partnership Program as a carrier-grade network equipment provider. The Program is a broad ecosystem of NFV technology, application and service partners that have tested on ETSI-compliant HPE OpenNFV infrastructure. This approach to NFV is built around adherence to openness and standards, allowing other telco ecosystem partners to introduce new innovations on top of the HPE OpenNFV platform.

“HPE and Samsung have already collaborated successfully behind the scenes on NFV projects that are transforming communications service providers and their legacy networks to agile telco cloud environments ready to satisfy the ever increasing demands of their customers while reducing cost,” said Werner Schaefer, vice president & general manager, NFV, HPE. “By formalizing our partnership with Samsung, we further expand our work we’re doing to bring NFV benefits to the CSP ecosystem.”

With the partnership, Samsung will take the lead in providing carrier-grade VNFs for mobile networks, such as virtualized EPC (vMME, vGW), virtualized IMS (vCSCF, vTAS, vPTT-AS, etc.), including VNF manager. HPE will allow carriers to bridge from their current infrastructure to NFV by providing the HPE OpenNFV platform and NFV management and orchestration (MANO) solutions.

The partnership also includes a joint go-to-market strategy with ready-to-install third party solutions. CSPs can choose from various third party offerings, verified by the HPE OpenNFV Partner Program, such as virtual private-LTE network service, vCPE and SD-WAN.

Samsung and HPE will also provide CSPs with NFV systems integration services to help ensure new technologies are implemented fast, cost-effectively and reliably.