Anuket Project

For the August Governing Board meeting, we need to cover 3 specific areas (the first three headings below) in single slides.  Additional material has also been captured.

Wording for the three Slides

Description

  • Full Merger of equal communities: a "Re-imagining" that produces a project where both communities are needed for success.
  • Merger Outcome: a single organization where telcos work together with vendors and other interested organizations and individuals to define, implement and test the cloud architectures that fulfill the common requirements of telecom applications
  • Community and Board Decision is needed about the name of the organization
    • Create a new name for the merged organization, or
    • Find a way to keep existing organization names
  • OPNFV Release process already allows for frequent project self-releases, so any CNTT release schedule can be accommodated.
  • Ensure all leadership needs and project activities are covered in the organizational structure
    • New TSC Elections and Officers (when organizations combine, see timeline below).
  • New Structures can be accommodated by mutual agreement

(points below are mostly structural recommendations with a lot of flexibility! Probably do not appear on the Description slide)

  • CNTT Work Streams become individual Projects, with PTLs, Committers, Contributors, and Project descriptions.
    • This can be a structure where the existing workstreams have 1:1 mapping to new formal projects, or some restructuring is possible/optional.
  • Build new WGs according to CNTT’s need for tiered structure (if any WG are needed).
  • Existing OPNFV projects could choose to continue to be independent projects or choose to combine with new projects being formed
  • Commitment from all OPNFV+CNTT members to supply a fixed amount of resources to both requirements and code development.
  • New project to Integrate all relevant project outputs into a cohesive deliverable for automated Conformance testing.
  • Reduce overall governance structure of OPNFV+CNTT, where possible. Reduce the overall number of meetings related to former CNTT activities.

Define Work Product, Interfaces and Dependencies

Two focus areas: requirements and development/implementation focused projects.

Work Products

  • Requirement projects
    • reference model, reference architectures, reference conformance specifications
    • Reference model is Jointly approved by GSMA
  • Implementation projects
    • platforms, test cases, tooling guided by specifications released by requirements projects
    • development to support LFN OVP badging programs

Dependencies and Relationships

  • Upstream projects and communities: OpenStack, CNCF, LFN, ETSI NFV, IETF, others (Continue "Working Upstream")

  • The merger option simplifies the relationship with GSMA.

Approximate Timeline

Factors:

  • Governing Board Decision in October 2020 on Fully-fleshed-out plan  (Ideally, an announcement at ONS = late Sept 2020)
  • OPNFV JERMA meta-Release Calendar: December 2020 Release date
  • CNTT Baraque Release in September 2020 (insert additional releases planned...)
  • Current CNTT officer term ends in December 2020
  • Intermediate tasks to flesh-out, post GB decision, such as the structure of the new organization
  • Nomination periods and Elections take about 6 weeks - propose to start the Election Calendar in November 2020 (half of December is unavailable).
  • NewName selection: Community and Marketing

Estimate:  New project in operation in January 2021.


= =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Background Info = =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Goals for this Option/Description

  1. Create a proposal that has advantages for the Governing Board, OPNFV, and CNTT.
  2. Help everyone recognize that the completeness of conformance testing is the common goal of all, and a unique opportunity for the success of all.
  3. Foster Trust, Transparency, and Truth.

Advantages over Current Mode of Operation

  1. Keep Requirements and Test Code Development together: OPNFV as an opensource and integration project for both OpenStack and K8s virtualization layers.
  2. Increase Communication and understanding of the level of effort involved to complete tasks among all contributors.
    1. OPNFV Charter and Website have been updated several times since January to fit CNTT requirements and mindsets (OPNFV 2.0)
  3. CNTT continues to enjoy LFN support for Zoom bridges, Program Management, Wiki Pages, Event Planning, etc.
    1. Data from LFN Support Survey indicates that < … results>
  4. Participation in both OPNFV and CNTT activities are stimulated by forming a complete conformance solution community. 
  5. NewName Pros:
    1. send the message that it’s not business as usual
    2. help CNTT feel that it is joining a partnership vs. becoming a part of another organization and losing control.

Possible disadvantages

Use fact based points (check when done)

  1. CNTT stakeholders perceive some loss of visibility in the Industry once merged.
  2. Some CNTT Stakeholders leave because they don't like the outcome.
    1. 1[but some think they won’t leave for long. If they still need the common infrastructure that CNTT proposes, and if the merged community is successful, they will come back sooner or later]


Ildiko's further suggestions follow:

Description

Desired outcome of the merge

To create a single organization where the telecom operators can work together with vendors and other interested organizations and individuals to define, implement and test the cloud architectures that fulfill the requirements of telecom applications.

Implementation considerations

  • CNTT and OPNFV to be merged as equal communities
  • Decision is needed about the name of the organization
    • Create a new name for the merged organization, or
    • Find a way to keep existing organization names
  • Ensure all leadership needs and project activities are covered in the organizational structure
    • (If it's not too many details we can list the options here about the work streams as OPNFV projects, Technical Steering Committee, a potential Architecture Committee, etc)
  • Desire to reduce governance complexity and number of meetings within the two organizations if possible

Work Product, Interfaces and Dependencies

Two kinds of focus areas: requirements- and implementation focused projects

Release artifacts

  • Requirement projects
    • reference model, reference architectures, reference conformance specifications
    • Reference model is Jointly approved by GSMA
  • Implementation projects
    • platforms, test cases, tooling guided by specifications released by requirements projects
    • development to support LFN OVP badging programs

Dependencies and Relationships

  • Upstream projects and communities: OpenStack, CNCF, LFN, ETSI NFV, IETF, others
  • The merger option simplifies the relationship[ with GSMA.

Approximate Timeline

Factors

  • Governing Board Decision in October 2020?
  • OPNFV JERMA meta-Release Calendar: December 2020 Release date
  • CNTT Baraque Release in September 2020 (insert additional releases planned...)
  • Current CNTT officer term ends in December 2020
  • Intermediate tasks to flesh-out, post GB decision, such as the structure of the new organization
  • Nomination periods and Elections take about 6 weeks - propose to start the Election Calendar in November 2020 (half of December is unavailable).
  • NewName selection: Community and Marketing

Estimate

New org in operation in January 2021

  • No labels

10 Comments

  1. Georg Kunz

    Additional input relevant to shaping the proposal: Feedback of CNTT members on the last FMO call regarding the concerns towards an OPNFV CNTT merger:

    • Concerned that the voice of operators get's lost
      • → addressing the concern: CNTT workstreams can continue exactly as before (if so decided by work stream leads): no impact on content produced
      • → a potentially renamed OPNFV+CNTT project allows for re-shaping perception of OPNFV → less vendor centric, more operator centric


    • Perception that OPNFV is only about writing code (developers) whereas CNTT is focusing on specs defined by architects
      • → addressing the concern: OPNFV is not just about code. OPNFV has t hge concept of requirements projects build in and there where successful requirements projects in its history (e.g. IPv6)


    • operators may not have development resources available to contribute to OPNFV

  2. Ildiko Vancsa

    In my view it would be beneficial to restructure the ‘Description' part of the proposal into something like:
    * Desired outcome of the merge
    * Implementation considerations

    In details:
    * Desired outcome of the merge
      *Something like: To create a single organization where the telecom operators can work together with vendors and other interested organizations and individuals to define, implement and test the cloud architectures that fulfill the requirements of telecom applications.
    * Implementation considerations
      * CNTT and OPNFV agree to participate in the merger as two equal communities
      * Decision is needed about the name of the organization
        * Create a new name for the merged organization
        * Find a way to keep existing organization names
      * Ensure all leadership needs and project activities are covered in the organizational structure
        * If it's not too many details we can list the options here about the work streams as OPNFV projects, Technical Steering Committee, a potential Architecture Committee, etc
        * Desire to reduce governance complexity and number of meetings within the two organizations if possible


    If we can come up with a desired organizational structure as well we can list that too but it is more of an implementation detail.

  3. Ildiko Vancsa

    I added a section with suggested slide text that we can polish further and use with the aim to focus more on the outcome and agreements and leave out some of the implementation details that can become distracting.

    1. Al Morton

      Hi Ildiko,  The text we originally placed in the first three sections is the wording for the three slides. I tired to say that in the forst line on the page, but I guess I wasn't clear.  I will fix this now...  We are expecting the GB members to read the details. Many of the questions people asked were already answered in the Description.

      1. Ildiko Vancsa

        Sorry, I probably missed some parts of the discussions about the above text. I hope you can still use some of the suggestions.

      2. Ildiko Vancsa

        One question. Were those questions asked by the governing board on the last meeting or by people from CNTT and OPNFV during the preparations or both?

        1. Al Morton

          The Governing Board has not "officially" seen the proposal yet. However, some GB members have commented during other meetings. There were questions from CNTT and OPNFV folks earlier this week, lots of comments on the page (including yours), and discussions since the middle of July among about seven people from OPNFV.  Hope this helps.

  4. Cedric Ollivier

    Could we explicitly write in the proposal that the new organisation won't affect the existing projects and roles (PTL, +2 votes) inside this existing projects.

    Any changes would only occured at the highest (a.k.a transversal) committees such as TSC to take both communities into account.


    I would suggest to precise "development to support LFN OVP badging programs".

    Could we complete it by "development to support reference conformance suites and its badging programs"?


    It's worth mentioning that a Board Decision is needed only if the name of the organization changes which is optional (at least in my opinion).




    1. Georg Kunz

      Hi Cedric,

      the message to the board is that this option recognizes the need to "Ensure all leadership needs and project activities are covered in the organizational structure", without going in the details. In fact, we wouldn't be able to flesh those out before the board meeting and the board likely would not care about those details. Instead this discussion will happen across the communities as soon as there is a decision - assuming this option is selected. The goal of this discussion is to find the best structure for the new organization and of course projects a free to argue for keeping their existing structure.

      By the way: something along the the lines of your comment was already mentioned in the proposal above (see also the comments). So, this will certainly be an option. Moreover, irrespective of the new structure, best open source practices must and will be applied.

      1. Cedric Ollivier

        I'm strongly convinced that it has to be clear after next Friday's meeting that the existing projects won't be affected by the merge process (scope, roles and contributors) or not.

        Else as far as I understand, it's unclear if it's a merge option.

        Yes I clearly second that the basic meritocratic rules and roles in place (a.k.a best opensource practices) in the existing OPNFV projects remain unchanged. It's not about TSC here.