ONF Hits The Ground Running with Execution of New Strategic Plan

MENLO PARK, Calif., June 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Providing an update to its previously announced strategic plan aimed at creating a robust supply chain for open source solutions for operators, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) today announced key milestones achieved. The achievements include the formation of the Technical Leadership Team (TLT), finalization on the initial focus areas for Reference Designs (RDs) and that four key new supply chain partners have joined as Partners (ONF's top membership tier) to invest in the Reference Design activities, including ADTRAN, Dell EMC, Edgecore Networks and Juniper Networks.

Reference Designs for the Edge & Access Cloud

ONF's operator leadership, which includes AT&T, China Unicom, Comcast, Google, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, NTT Group, and Turk Telekom, have agreed on a focused set of open source Reference Designs they communally plan to take to deployment in the near future as they begin to build out their edge & access clouds.  Furthermore, work on these RDs and their corresponding Exemplar Platforms have begun, with expectations that drafts, first implementations and production deployments will take place this year.

Reference Designs are "blueprints" for how to put common modular components together to create platforms based on open source to address specific deployment use cases for the emerging edge cloud.  

Details on the Reference Designs, including the Operators committing to each, can be found at ONF Reference Design blog post.

Trailblazing Open Source Platforms

In addition to the Reference Designs that are all tightly scoped and on the verge of deployment, the ONF will continue to pursue open source platforms that lead next-generation activities for the industry.  These activities include:

The ONF operators remain passionate about the full CORD vision, but recognize that 5G technologies are still in formation and for that reason deployment are perhaps a year behind other exemplar platforms.

Driving Formation of a New Supply Chain

To support operators' impending deployment of these Reference Designs, a number of tier-1 vendors have joined the efforts as ONF partners to contribute their skills, expertise and technologies to help realize the RDs.  ADTRAN, Dell/EMC, Edgecore Networks and Juniper Networks are actively participating as supply chain partners in this reference design process.  Each brings unique skills and complementary competencies, and by working together the partnership will be able to expedite the production readiness of the various solutions.

These new partners complement ONF's existing supply chain partners Ciena, Intel, Radisys and Samsung, each of whom are playing equally essential roles in the new open source ecosystem.

ONF Partner Commentary

ADTRAN

"Over the last several years, ADTRAN has fully embraced open, disaggregated and software-defined attributes as the core principles in our Mosaic-branded access focused solutions. We are encouraged by ONF's new strategic plan and strong operator commitment and believe ADTRAN is a perfect fit as a supply chain partner," said ADTRAN Senior Vice President of Technology and Strategy Jay Wilson. "ADTRAN intends to contribute across multiple reference design initiatives by applying access domain expertise both in software and systems integration." 

Dell EMC

"Dell EMC's Open Networking initiative is about choice, flexibility and agility for enterprises and service providers, without a compromise on technology," said Gavin Cato, Senior Vice President, Dell EMC Networking Engineering. "Dell EMC is a pioneer in open networking and committed to advancing the ONF efforts for harmonizing open source initiatives and transforming networking operations."

Edgecore Networks

"Edgecore has been delivering open network solutions to data center operators and service providers for years, and understands the important role of the ONF as the premier community that defines and develops solutions based on open technology to meet the real world requirements of service providers," said George Tchaparian, CEO, Edgecore Networks.  "We have been contributing to ONF work on CORD and are excited now to become a supplier partner contributing to the reference designs that will accelerate deployment of open networking."

Juniper Networks

"At Juniper Networks, we are huge proponents of the open-infrastructure movement. In fact, as a testament to that, we open-sourced our Contrail SDN controller in 2013. We also became the first major network solution provider to incorporate P4 and P4Runtime earlier this year, enabling ubiquitous control across all our platforms. The industry's need for open-source solutions has only grown since then as service providers more and more are working to ensure that a majority their networks include open-source infrastructure to build best-of-breed solutions and encourage innovation. We are excited to be joining the Open Networking Foundation to continue fostering innovation in open networking."

– Bikash Koley, Chief Technology Officer, Juniper Networks

TLT Leadership

Comcast

"Comcast is excited about the positive benefits open-source platforms and solutions are delivering across the industry.  ONF's work on reference designs represents an important step forward in open source development for the edge cloud, and we're looking forward to participating."

-        Dr. Robert L. Howald, Comcast and ONF TLT Chair

AT&T

"AT&T has been a strong advocate of ONF's open-source initiatives and we believe we are now at the cusp of deploying open source based solutions for next-generation broadband access, further driving open solutions to the edges of networks. Reference Designs are being formed to help ensure the success of this effort, and to clearly indicate to the ecosystem where we and our fellow operators are headed."

-       Al Blackburn, AT&T and ONF TLT Vice-Chair

Reference Design Details

Additional details on the Reference Designs can be found in this blog post.

About the Open Networking Foundation:

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is an operator led consortium spearheading disruptive network transformation. Now the recognized leader for open source solutions for operators, the ONF first launched in 2011 as the standard bearer for Software Defined Networking (SDN). Led by its operator partners AT&T, China Unicom, Comcast, Deutsche Telekom, Google, NTT Group and Turk Telekom, the ONF is driving vast transformation across the operator space. For further information visit http://www.opennetworking.org

SOURCE Open Networking Foundation

Related Links

http://www.opennetworking.org