Beijing, April 26, 2017 — Today, at the China SDN/NFV Conference 2017, the SDN/NFV Industry Alliance (SDNFVIA) and Edge Computing Consortium (ECC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU). The two parties will collaborate to promote the development of the IoT industry chain, prosperity of the application ecosystem, and digital transformation of vertical industries.

Wei Leping, President of the SDNFVIA, and Fang Fahe, Vice Chairman of the ECC, signed the MoU on behalf of each party. In the future, the SDNFVIA and ECC will collaborate in the following fields:

Technical standards and test beds for analyzing and testing industrial application scenarios of IoT

Development of an industrial EC-IoT and SDN/NFV platform ecosystem

Two-way communication and cooperation, and joint brand promotion

Other fields of mutual interest

The ECC has 80 members around the world, most of which are from the operational technology (OT) and information and communications technology (ICT) industries. The ECC aims to accelerate industrial coordination, open innovation, and demonstration of edge computing and to build a cooperation platform to promote digital transformation of industries.

The SDNFVIA consists of organizations in the SDN/NFV industry, and aims to build an ecosystem for the industry and accelerate the commercialization of SDN/NFV. The alliance addresses challenges of making existing networks SDN/NFV-based, network service innovation and flexible deployment, and O&M of large-scale networks.

Fang Fahe said, "The collaboration between the Edge Computing Consortium and SDN/NFV Industry Alliance helps us have a comprehensive understanding of requirements of the IoT industry. In the future, we can cooperate with industry partners to jointly study and test interconnections between SDN/NFV solutions and edge computing solutions and offer end customers better E2E IoT solutions. The integration of our strengths will definitely benefit the IoT industry, ensuring its fast and sound development."

Wei Leping said, "The era of Industrial Internet creates huge opportunities for cross-border extension or transformation of the communications industry. Services of manufacturers and service providers have higher requirements on networks. To meet the requirements, the network architecture needs to be reconsidered, redesigned, and redefined. The SDN/NFV Industry Alliance and Edge Computing Consortium will fully leverage the advantages of our platforms through this collaboration to jointly study requirements of vertical industry services on networks and provide a new network architecture design that integrates OT and ICT."

The digital transformation of global industries is underway, ushering in the latest industrial revolution. The edge computing module is an open platform that is deployed at the network edge close to a device or data source and integrates networking, computing, storage, and application capabilities. It provides intelligent interconnection services along the shortest path to meet key requirements of industry digitalization on agile connections, real-time services, data optimization, intelligent applications, security, and privacy. The development of edge computing and applications presents higher requirements on network O&M and flexible deployment. SDN and NFV enable networks to break through restrictions imposed by the traditional network architecture and support connections with a large number of devices, automatic O&M, and coordination between the network and security policies, meeting the requirements of edge computing. After signing the MoU, the SDNFVIA and ECC strengthen communication and cooperation with each other, which will facilitate integration of the ICT and OT industries. The collaboration enlarges the market space and creates more development opportunities, helping the two parties achieve win-win development by providing industry customers with solutions of greater value.

About the SDNFVIA

The SDN/NFV Industry Alliance (SDNFVIA) was founded on November 4, 2014 by China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) together with 15 organizations in the industry. Guided by the principle of "openness, innovation, collaboration, implementation", the alliance that consists of more than 70 members aims to build eco-strength of the SDN/NFV industry and accelerate the SDN/NFV commercial process.

About the ECC

The Edge Computing Consortium (ECC) was officially established by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenyang Institute of Automation of Chinese Academy of Sciences, CAICT, Intel Corporation, ARM, and iSoftStone in Beijing on November 30, 2016. The ECC has 80 members worldwide and aims to build a platform for edge computing cooperation, accelerate open collaboration of OT and ICT industries, incubate best industry application practices, and promote sound and sustainable development of edge computing.