Software-defined networking, or SDN, is getting a big boost with a project called “Open Daylight.”
Some of the biggest names in networking technology are joining forces with Red Hat and the open source world to form a coalition designed to help drive adoption of the emerging SDN technology.
Cisco, IBM, Ericsson, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Citrix, Brocade, Big Switch Networks and VMware are the “platinum” and “gold” headliners of the new group announced Monday. They will work together under the auspices of the Linux Foundation and are committed to a “more open source framework” in developing SDN solutions.
“This is a rare gathering of leaders in the technology ecosystem who have decided to combine efforts in a common platform in order to innovate faster and build better products for their customers,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “The world has learned that collaborative development can quickly drive software innovation, especially in fast moving markets. We are excited to be working with OpenDaylight and expect truly amazing things to come.”
SDN poses threats and opportunities for companies in the network technology space, both in hardware and software.
“Red Hat has long championed the open source development model, which can result in faster innovation and accelerated technology adoption,” said Brian Stevens, chief technology officer and vice president of engineering at Red Hat. ”The OpenDaylight Project is designed in line with these principles in order to bring a more open approach to Software-Defined Networking to bring better technology to the industry faster. Red Hat is pleased to participate in the OpenDaylight community alongside The Linux Foundation and many other industry leaders to drive the evolution of Software-Defined networking.”
Companies are providing a variety of resources and technology to the project.
SDN is seen as a way to help companies capitalize further on opportunities in “cloud computing” and virtualization by enabling network and service providers to deliver software-based solutions for network speed and performance management.
The partners have agreed to support open standards such as the OpenFlow Networking Standard, the Linux Foundation said.
The first code from the SDN partnership is expected to be released in the third quarter.
Noted Cisco CTO David Ward: ”Network programmability and orchestration are key pillars of Cisco’s strategy, and we are excited to be participating in OpenDaylight with other amazing partners and community members to further the technologies and products associated with it. We see Open Source as critical to our customers and equally important as our standards efforts for SDN, and we look forward to collaborating with partners, customers and developers to help them increase the speed of building and deploying software-defined offerings.”
Added IBM’s Ambuj Goyal, general manager for system storage and networking: “IBM is working with customers and others to design, build and support the new era of computing — an era driven by unprecedented data growth, and the wide scale adoption of such game-changing technologies as cloud, mobile, social and Big Data analytics. A key aspect of this new paradigm is the software defined environment that brings much needed intelligence to the network. We believe that the OpenDaylight Project will help clients ascend to this level of enterprise computing and start reaping the performance, management and cost benefits associated with the software-defined environment. In addition, IBM is delighted to have played a key role in the formation of this collaborative initiative, which aligns well with our long-term commitment to openness and innovation.”
The full announcement can be read online.
