Adrian Hoban gives us an exclusive interview on the goals of TSC, what Release 0 will bring to the community and much more.

1) What are the overall goals for the OSM Technical Steering Committee (TSC)?

The role of the TSC is to coordinate the project’s technical activities. Its functions include setting and evolving the Data Model to meet End-User Advisory Group (EUAG) priorities, collecting feature requests from the EUAG and prioritizing them per release, ensuring the implementation of the feature roadmap and the Data Model, deciding what is distributed as outcome of the project, and fostering, supporting and growing the project’s community.

2) How do you define success for the TSC?

TSC success will be achieved through the clarity of the technical direction we provide while staying true to the architectural principles of layering, abstraction, modularity and simplicity; OSM developing into a vibrant, growing and engaged technical community that enables collaboration, and delivering outputs that the End-User community composed of operators and vendors can leverage effectively to deliver on the NFV vision.

3) What does Release 0 deliver to the community?

Release 0 (R0) represents a number of important steps forward since the MWC’16 demonstration and provides a solid platform on which to develop Release 1, which will be the next OSM community initiative.

An important topic for OSM is to improve the user experience and the ease by which VNF vendors can develop data models for on-boarding. R0 presents a simplified on-boarding process by developing a single entry point for VNF and NS packages. The VNF and NS descriptors are now easier to read with the move to YAML format for the descriptors, replacing UUIDs with meaningful names, moving embedded scripts in the descriptors into packages and separating out default values and initial configuration. The code base for R0 is entirely Apache 2.0 licensed with external dependencies removed. Significant effort has been put into developing a comprehensive set of publically available documentation covering the data model in detail, the minimal infrastructure requirements, installation guides, how-to guides for users and developers, technical briefings, videos, the OSM tool suite, and the SDLC.

4) What are the next key deliverables that we can look forward to?

The focus is shifting toward solidifying requirements for Release 1, which are expected to be decided upon by end of June. That said, the following is tentative guidance on what to expect with Release 1. The themes for the release will focus on the on-boarding experience and OSM install experience, Enhanced Platform Aware (EPA) based resource allocation improvements, Service Modelling improvements —including refinements to the data model and monitoring updates—, Multi-VIM and Multi-Site support.

5) When and where can we see demonstrations of OSM?

OSM provides a public wiki that offers videos of the MWC’16 demo. The most recent OSM demo was at the TMForum Live! 2016 event in Nice where the Catalyst Project demonstrated NFV Service Orchestration and Lifecycle Management based on OSM. This integrated OSM with OSS/BSS to deliver on an end-to-end managed service across virtual and physical infrastructure via a single platform.

6) How is the TSC structured, and how does the structure drive you toward meeting the goals?

The TSC does not operate in isolation, so it is important to consider the TSC structure in the context of the overall ETSI OSM structure. The TSC receives inputs from a variety of sources including policy and directional input from the Leadership Group, use case and feature requests from the End User Advisor Group (which are prioritized), feature proposals and directional clarifications from the Module Development Group (MDG) and Task Force (TF) leads, as well as from OSM community contributors. The TSC meets weekly, with every second week including an extended invitee list, for MDG/TF leads to review development status and decide on technical approaches. The TSC also runs the weekly OSM TECH calls that are open to the entire OSM community. The primary output from the TSC is the data model that end users and the VNF vendor community will need to interoperate with OSM, as well as the set of themes for the releases and the high level epics per MDG/TF that set the scope for each release. The TSC works with the MDG/TF leads on these deliverables and supports their work with the OSM community to further develop these epics into sprint sized stories.

7) As TSC chair, what are you personally excited about?

There are so many things to be excited about, but the best thing has to be the incredibly passionate and talented people I have the pleasure of working with in OSM. I believe the strength and potential for success of a diverse open source community such as OSM is intrinsically linked to the talent of its members and even more importantly to the way they collaborate. Right from the start of this project there has been this amazing openness in the conversations and in working together to agree on the right technical approach and resolve technical challenges and I look forward to that continuing.