We are republishing this blog here. Earlier, it was published on LF Edge Blog.
A Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model of cloud computing brings significant power to end users. It provides a platform to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining underlying infrastructure. On the path to building 5G networks, telecom operators need such breakthrough models to focus more on designing and developing network services and applications.
XGVela is a 5G cloud-native open-source framework introducing Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) capabilities for telecom operators. With this PaaS platform, operators can quickly design, develop, and innovate telco network functions and services — enabling a stronger focus on business value rather than infrastructure complexities.
China Mobile initiated this project internally, which was later hosted and announced by the Linux Foundation to accelerate telco cloud adoption. Other key supporters of XGVela include China Unicom, China Telecom, ZTE, Red Hat, Ericsson, Nokia, H3C, CICT, and Intel.
Initially, XGVela leveraged PaaS functionality from existing open-source PaaS projects like Grafana, Envoy, and ZooKeeper, further enhancing them with telco-specific requirements.
Why XGVela PaaS Capabilities are Needed for the 5G Network
- It helps telecom operators keep up with rapid changes in 5G network requirements driven by cloud-native adoption — enabling faster upgrades and agile deployments.
- Operators are moving from VNF-based network functions to cloud-native CNFs, while still needing hybrid coexistence. XGVela supports both CNFs and VNFs in one platform.
- It reduces network construction costs by adopting a healthy open-source ecosystem like ONAP, Kubernetes, OpenDaylight, Akraino, OPNFV, etc.
- It simplifies 5G network function design and innovation by allowing developers to focus on service logic instead of infrastructure management — using standard APIs.
XGVela integrates CNCF projects based on telco requirements to form General-PaaS. It is architected with microservices-driven design for network function development and seamlessly extends into telco PaaS.
XGVela works closely with OPNFV and Akraino for integration and testing. In a recent presentation, Srinivasa Adepalli and Kuralamudhan Ramakrishnan showcased similarities between features of Akraino ICN blueprints and XGVela. Many environments want to deploy CNFs and applications on the same cluster, which raises the need for enhancements on top of Kubernetes for telco-centric CNF deployments and interoperability — where XGVela and Akraino ICN BP align strongly.
You can subscribe to the XGVela mailing list here to track the project progress. For more information about Akraino Blueprints, visit Akraino Edge Stack Wiki. Or join the discussion on the LF Edge Slack Channel (#akraino-blueprints, #akraino-help, #akraino-tsc).
