rk provides business agility for applications and services launched and reduces the time-to-market (TTM) for service roll-out and capacity growth. A common cloud infrastructure for a single reusable test envi- ronment as well as production environment significantly reduces test cycle intervals and costs asso- ciated with multiple test laboratories. Software upgrades can be performed in near real-time for new feature functionality. The creation of the VNF and service catalogs provides opportunities for new third-party business models. The ability to reuse VNFs enables instantiating a service as needed for a customer or a set of customers. Leveraging open standards and open source (e.g., OpenStack, restful APIs, etc.) enables optimizing investment while protecting current investment by enabling coexistence and complete interworking between new virtual and existing PNFs. The sections below describe the framework in additional detail. 14.2.1 VIRTUAL SERVICE FRAMEWORK The virtual service framework makes some key paradigm shifts to address the problems encoun- tered with current implementations. Key objectives and drivers of the virtual service framework are as follows: 1. Virtual service-specific instantiations for faster TTM and capacity growth 2. Optimal definition of vendor-independent VNF decomposition leveraging cloud technol- ogy for seamless introduction of new technologies 3. VNF, service, and product catalogs and a policy-enabling service creation environment with open APIs for rapid creation of first and third-party applications 4. VNF catalogs for opportunities for new third-party business models 5. Ability to reuse VNFs across services reducing TTM and cost 6. Use of open source technologies (e.g., OpenStack, Kernel-based Virtual Machine [KVM], open source databases) to lower cost and leverage industry innovation Service Platforms AT&T Service Design and Creation ASDC Portal Customer Portal Policies Catalogs ASDC Tools (VF, Service & Product) API Exposure Logic Logic Logic 1st Party and 3rd Party Service S