WHAT IS OSM?

OSM is developing an open source Management and Orchestration (MANO) stack aligned with ETSI NFV Information Models. As a community-led project, OSM delivers a production-quality MANO stack that meets operators' requirements for commercial NFV deployments.

OSM Resources:

OSM White Papers

 

OSM Workshops

 

OSM Videos

 

OSM User Guide

ETSI NFV Alignment

OSM is closely aligned with the evolution of ETSI NFV and provides a regularly updated reference implementation of NFV MANO.

Open Source

ETSI OSM uses well-established tools and methods to develop code under the Apache Public License 2.0.

Open Community

Participation to OSM is open to members and non-members of ETSI, as well as individual developers and end users from all across the globe. Check how to join or learn more about OSM.

RECENT NEWS

Sophia Antipolis, 02 February 2026

ETSI Open Source MANO announces Release NINETEEN, extending it's capabilities for cloud-native native orchestration.

Sophia Antipolis, 09 September 2025

ETSI Open Source MANO announces Release SEVENTEEN, extending it's capabilities for cloud-native native orchestration.

Sophia Antipolis, 15 January 2025

ETSI Open Source MANO announces Release SEVENTEEN, extending it's capabilities for cloud-native native orchestration.

OSM BY THE NUMBERS

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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

“Operational effectiveness at the edge is critical to a successful 5G strategy and emerging business models for edge-based compute. OSM Release SIX connects edge and core to provide repeatable and reusable services that span the full telco topology and enable both 5G infrastructure and third-party app ecosystems for the edge in VMs and containers.”

Mark Shuttleworth

CEO of Canonical and founder of Ubuntu

“Management and Orchestration (MANO) is, at the same time, one of the key components and most controversial concepts in network virtualization architecture. Telefónica has long been working from the point of view of innovation in its development. A first result and seed of OSM is OpenMANO, a highly functional framework pioneering the first open source NFV Orchestration and Management stack and, currently, a key component of Telefónica’s NFV Reference Lab. By joining this community, we aim to accelerate the development of MANO while recognizing the value of open-source implementations of NFV and a need to harmonize efforts there.”

Antonio Elizondo

Head of Network Virtualisation Strategy and Technology, Global CTO Unit, Telefónica

“OSM has evolved from an interesting PoC into the most promising architecture for orchestrating VNFs, under the multi-vendor, standardized approach that our Telco customers have been looking for. Increased robustness, as well as exciting features that pave the path towards 5G and the Edge, let us build with confidence the second release of our distribution, WhiteNFV Barcelona, in order to cover the increased demand for operator-led, automated NFV deployments.”

Joris Vleminckx

COO Whitestack

“The ETSI OSG Open Source MANO (OSM) initiative will facilitate the development of open source software for management and orchestration of future networks. Knowledge, capabilities and solutions within this area will be of critical importance to Telenor when virtualizing the network for increased flexibility, faster service delivery, rapid innovation and operational efficiency.”

Patrick Waldemar

Vice President, Telenor Research

“Proprietary management and automation approaches have impeded NFV deployments. Service providers recognize the need for a standardized MANO information model delivered in conjunction with an open source MANO platform to cultivate a robust commercial NFV supplier ecosystem. I’m thrilled with the progress OSM has made to meet these needs and its growing industry acceptance.”

Matt Harper

OSM Founding Member, CTO, RIFT.io

1. Interoperability

Interoperability is a key strategy for OSM which ultimately will achieve three critical objectives for end users as network transformation accelerates:

  1. Significant reductions in cost and complexity.
  2. Flexibility to implement “best of breed” deployments.
  3. Ability to leverage existing investments in their networks.

Several developments will be part of Release TWO that further accelerates this strategy:

  • The code base now offers multi-disk support. This is important as many applications need to use more than one disk to operate effectively.
  • The addition of OpenStack v3 APIs enables greater flexibility in an OpenStack deployment.
  • An additional 15 VNF vendors were on-boarded during the ETSI Plugtests which is a testament of the ease of use of OSM’s Data Model and on-boarding process.
  • Connector improvements in VMware vCloud Director which allows for greater interoperability between VMware vCloud and the MANO stack.
  • Interop with public clouds like AWS which opens the door to automating NFV deployments in public clouds or in hybrid multi-site scenarios.
  • Two new OSM Remote Labs provided by Wind River and VMware joined the network and substantially increased the number of combinations of VIMs and SDN Controllers available for the OSM CI/CD.

2. Packaging, Distribution and Installation

How easily you can install a system has a direct correlation to OPEX savings, not only from the point of view of time to setup but also from the angle of maintaining skilled in-house expertise and physical resources for the installation process. Simplicity is key to cost efficiencies and to the advancement of the network. Some of the developments in Release TWO include:

  • A new package management update for the UI.
  • A 50% reduction in the OSM memory footprint.
  • Docker container images can now be used as a distribution model.
  • UI Composer now has a dynamic cross-reference drop-down list to ensure the validity of Data Model entries.

3. Usability

Usability is equally fundamental to realising savings in OPEX, not only through the ease of use but also through improved fault detection and recoverability. The advancements in this area include:

  • Access to VNF consoles through the User Interface (UI).
  • Support for cloud-init.
  • Common Logging & Exception Handling with the alignment of OpenVIM logs and exception handling within the OSM framework.
  • Availability of new OSM Remote Labs makes it very easy to use a variety of test infrastructures.

4. Security

It’s quite common when discussing security that the focus is often on locking down parts of the network or limiting access. However in an NFV context, often the application requires access to all of the traffic to help inform or make decisions. The ability to disable filtering on ports has been added in Release TWO to give the necessary level of control to the admins.

5. Data Plane Configuration

Data Plane configuration has been extended to facilitate complex network deployments that are aligned with some of the needs of 5G infrastructure. Two new features include:

  • A new Underlay Network Management feature is introduced which allows direct management of the SDN Controllers like ODL and ONOS.
  • OpenVIM can now manage compute nodes running OVS. Previously, only Linux bridge was supported.

6. Service Assurance

The ability to guarantee network services to your customers is essential and not only in terms of uptime but also in the ability to grow and shrink network services on demand. Release TWO delivers an experimental Network Services Scaling feature allowing you to dynamically add or remove VNF instances from running services.

During our conversation, Adrian also added that aside from the technical advances during the Release TWO development cycle, the OSM Technical Steering Committee also engaged extensively with ETSI NFV providing feedback on the Information Model (IM) for the VNF and Network Service Descriptors. OSM was also a successful participant in the first NFV ETSI Plugtests earlier this year.

In response to a final question about OSM’s plans beyond Release TWO, Adrian concluded that Release THREE is focused on delivering a production-ready solution and is expected to bring further enhancements in the areas of service assurance, usability, resiliency and security. Full details of Release THREE will be locked down in the coming weeks and will be announced shortly on the ETSI OSM portal. 

A parting message to the OSM community is to stay tuned for the exciting new upcoming developments. Thank you, Adrian, for your updates, insight and time.