ZTE Principal Architect of SDN/NFV Dick Chen becomes board member of OPNFV to help advance evolution of NFV; ZTE Radio Network Architect Jun Zhang becomes member of Technical Steering Committee

19 November 2014, Shenzhen, China – ZTE Corporation (“ZTE”) (H share stock code: 0763.HK / A share stock code: 000063.SZ), a publicly-listed global provider of telecommunications equipment, network solutions and mobile devices, is pleased to announce that two company experts on network function virtualization (NFV) were appointed to key positions at Open Platform NFV to help guide the development of the technology globally.

Dick Chen, Principal Architect of SDN/NFV at ZTE, will join OPNFV’s board of directors, while Jun Zhang, Radio Network Architect at ZTE, will join OPNFV’s Technical Steering Committee. OPNFV is an open source project focused on accelerating the evolution of NFV, and is committed to establishing a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform that industry peers will build together to advance the evolution of NFV.

“The advent of SDN and NFV has brought about the biggest shift in networking in the past 20 years,” said Margaret Chiosi, President of OPNFV. “To make the technologies successful, we need to collaborate to build a common foundation for the future of networks. We look forward to seeing ZTE take an active role in helping to make OPNFV and open source NFV successful.”

In 2013, ZTE launched its comprehensive end-to-end ElasticNet solution for SDN/NFV deployments in carrier-grade network infrastructure, cloud data centers and Enterprise networks. ElasticNet is based on the ideas of centralized control, function virtualization and network automation. As a platinum member of OPNFV, ZTE will work with other members to define the future direction of telecommunications, making the ElasticNet solution more optimized and open.

“The market is embracing SDN and NFV, which opens doors for many opportunities for the industry to innovate and provide new services much faster,” said Zhao Xianming, Chief Technology Officer at ZTE. “Industry-wide collaboration on an open NFV platform will allow us to address critical concerns upfront and build a common reference platform. This will establish an open ecosystem for NFV solutions based on open standards and open source software.”

As a globally-leading communication equipment and integrated solution provider, ZTE is committed to driving innovations in communications and information technology. SDN enables the development of more flexible and easily-managed networks that support OTT (over the top) services. NFV will change the network infrastructure architecture, the deploy mode of new services, and bring revolutionary change in agile network and convenient service deployment. The integration of SDN and NFV is one of the most significant and transformative telecommunication technologies.