Guru Parulkar introduces himself to the ONF community as he steps into his new role as Executive Director.
As we move forward in merging ONF and ON.Lab, I wanted to formally introduce myself to the community as the new Executive Director. I am excited for what the future will bring as we push ahead to bring standards and open source together, and charter this next phase of SDN in “the new ONF.” With this new ONF, we will accelerate and grow the adoption of SDN, a high priority goal that the entire community is committed to.
ONF has been the standard bearer of SDN since its inception by inventors of SDN and leading service providers and network operators. ONF and its community can take credit for all the progress of SDN on various fronts within the ecosystem. I want to take the opportunity to thank and congratulate Dan Pitt who has been a tireless champion of SDN and OpenFlow around the world.
ONF has an amazing ecosystem that includes service providers (large network operators of different types), chip manufacturers, white/bright box manufacturers, software vendors, systems integrators, startups, certification and training partners, and leading researchers. ONF has a large pool of contributors with depth and breadth of expertise who participate and contribute to its various working groups and councils. And most importantly ONF is led by a board that includes industry’s visionaries, thought leaders, and creators of SDN representing leading service providers that depend on ONF to play a critical role as they transform their infrastructure with SDN.
I am humbled and honored to be appointed the Executive Director ONF and ON.Lab, to be merged into one under the name of ONF in the next year. The combining of the two organizations will create a unique organization in the industry that will bring standards and open source together to charter the next phase of SDN. I am very excited about our service providers’ vision for ONF and how ONF is going to be a strategic partner as they transform their networks into a platform for service delivery. For now let me just say ONF has great opportunities ahead as our industry undergoes a major transformation with disaggregation, softwarization, and open source.
The work, which has already begun, is leading us to better understand what’s working well and what needs to be improved upon. One top item we’re looking at is bringing open source software and standards together, while being swift, devise, and effective. Input, suggestions, and example of commitment to this task and others are welcome by everyone in the ONF community as we begin our work together.
Thank you to all for welcoming me with open arms. Here’s to the new ONF and starting this new journey as a community committed to SDN and open source software. Stay tuned as we share more details of the next exciting phase of ONF and SDN!
- Guru Parulkar, Executive Director
