ONOS project to tap Linux Foundation’s open source expertise on NFV and SDN work
The Open Network Lab’s Open Network Operating System project and the Linux Foundation announced a partnership designed to boost open source-based work targeting software-defined networking and network functions virtualization.
The two groups formed the Collaborative Project under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, which is designed to focus work from the ONOS community on “open source platforms, solutions and ecosystem for service providers to monetize SDN/NFV, while helping vendors and service providers invent new business models.” Specifically, the partnership is said to focus on creating SDN solutions tapping open source software platforms, white boxes, network control and management applications to boost the creation and deployment of SDN platforms.
The Linux Foundation said it will assist ONOS to “organize, grow and harness” the open source community in taking its platform “to the next level of production readiness and drive adoption in production networks.”
“Service providers are increasingly adopting open source software to build their networks and today are making open source and collaboration a strategic part of their business and an investment in the future,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, in a statement. “The Linux Foundation recognizes the impact the ONOS project can have on service provider networks and will help advance ONOS to achieve its potential. The partnership combines the best of the two organizations’ capabilities in support of a strategic vision to transform service provider infrastructure with open source SDN and NFV.”
The deal will see the ONOS projects arrangement with ON.Lab altered slightly, with ONOS now focused more on open source in its work with the Linux Foundation.
ON.Lab launched the ONOS project late last year targeting service providers with a scalable SDN control plan “featuring northbound and southbound open APIs and paradigms for a diversity of management, control and service applications across mission-critical networks.” Founding members of the ONOS initiative include AT&T, NTT Communications, Ciena, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel and NEC. China Unicom also recently joined the organization.
Last month, the ONOS project released its fourth open source SDN platform under the Drake name, which the project said is focused on infrastructure enhancements to support SDN and network function virtualization “case enablement.” The Drake release is said to include new security, configuration and application-level feature sets that support improvements to the northbound and southbound data flows.
The Linux Foundation also houses OpenDaylight, which is seen by some as a competitive environment to the ONOS project. OpenDaylight looked to dismiss the notion, with its executive director Neela Jacques stating in a blog post he thought the move “is good for the industry and good for OpenDaylight,” though he did note there “may be some short-term challenges.”
“Key users such as AT&T have shared with us that there’s currently no single technology that solves all of their problems,” Jacques explained. “Some end users and vendor organizations see strong reasons to support both ONOS and OpenDaylight at this time. Just like sibling projects OpenDaylight and OPNFV, hosting both ONOS and OpenDaylight under one umbrella allows us to both continue innovating, but also drives us toward greater synergies and ways to leverage each other.”
RCR Wireless News recently spoke with Jacques as part of its weekly NFV/SDN Reality Check show on the continued evolution of NFV and SDN, and the impact open-source collaborations have had on that evolution.
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter
