FP7 ICT T-NOVA Kick-off meeting

FP7 ICT T-NOVA was organised and hosted at NCSR Demokritos premises by MediaNet Lab. Project T-NOVA has officially started at 1/1/2014 and its duration is 3 years. The project is coordinated by NCSRD (Dr. A. Kourtis).

With the aim of promoting the NFV concept, T-NOVA introduces a novel enabling framework, allowing operators not only to deploy virtualized Network Functions (NFs) for their own needs, but also to offer them to their customers, as value-added services. Virtual network appliances (gateways, proxies, firewalls, transcoders, analyzers etc.) can be provided on-demand as-a-Service, eliminating the need to acquire, install and maintain specialized hardware at customers’ premises.

For these purposes, T-NOVA will design and implement a management/orchestration platform for the automated provision, configuration, monitoring and optimization of Network Functions-as-a-Service (NFaaS) over virtualised Network/IT infrastructures. T-NOVA leverages and enhances cloud management architectures for the elastic provision and (re-) allocation of IT resources assigned to the hosting of Network Functions. It also exploits and extends Software Defined Networking platforms for efficient management of the network infrastructure.

Furthermore, in order to facilitate the involvement of diverse actors in the NFV scene and attract new market entrants, T-NOVA establishes a “NFV Marketplace”, in which network services and Functions by several developers can be published and brokered/traded. Via the Marketplace, customers can browse and select the services and virtual appliances which best match their needs, as well as negotiate the associated SLAs and be charged under various billing models. A novel business case for NFV is thus introduced and promoted.

T-NOVA is an Integrated Project co-funded by the European Commission / 7th Framework Programme, Grant Agreement no. 619520. Its duration is 36 months (January 2014 – December 2016).