Criterion Networks’ Srinivas Vegesna provides a recap of the multi-day symposium held in Bangalore, India.
For the second year in a row, the open networking community in India gathered in Bangalore for a multi-day symposium to discuss solutions and use cases in the emerging technology domains of SDN, NFV, and OpenStack. Held in association with ONF, the Indo-American Chambers of Commerce (IACC), and Criterion Network Labs (CNLabs), the Open Networking India Symposium 2016 focused on SDN and NFV end-user customers, solutions, and use cases in SDN, NFV, and the cloud.
Prior to the Symposium’s kick-off, we held a three-day SDN workshop on certifications and unveiled the first cohorts of ONF-Certified SDN Associate (OCSA) certified professionals since the certification was launched this past January. These professionals were recognized at the start of the program by Dan Pitt for their initiative and successful certification.
The event officially started on January 31 and included 25 speakers and panelists from well-known operators and vendors, as well as open networking leaders. Presentations by Bill Snow of ON.Lab and Gagan Puranik of Verizon Wireless on the drivers for tomorrow’s networks and the critical role open source and SDN/NFV play in it set an excellent tone for the event. Dan Pitt also provided a keynote discussing DevOps meeting standards and software, providing valuable insight into ONF’s open source initiatives and how DevOps is working with standards.
The service provider and data center/enterprise vendor panels made for a very engaging session with numerous vendors taking center stage to provide insights into their solution offerings and perspective on SDN and NFV adoption. In addition to these perspectives, Mike McBride of Huawei and Amod Dani of Arista provided useful service provider and data center market use-case overviews, which helped to set the stage for their respective panel discussions. The three end-user presentations by Verizon Wireless, SIFY, and FlipKart and the end-user panel discussion ensured that the event objectives of end-user engagement were met, as the Symposium’s 260 plus audience were primarily end users.
In addition to these informative talks, the Symposium featured a solution showcase exhibit with participation from Arista Networks, Criterion Networks, Huawei, IXIA, Juniper, Spirent, and Tata Elxsi, and featured the latest projects from ONF’s OpenSourceSDN.org community.
We had great enthusiasm from attendees and broad participation at the event with thought provoking questions at the end of panels spurring robust discussions. The engagement level and interest from participants were contagious and I am sure the learnings from the event will lead many to take up initiatives and roadmaps toward SDN and NFV adoption and deployment in the region with greater vigor in their organizations.
The speakers’ presentations and session videos are available on the event website agenda page. The event photos are also available on the event website landing page here. The positive feedback and encouragement from everyone involved gives us a great incentive to keep the community and platform growing in strength in the years to come, and we are looking forward to our next symposium with even more robust sessions and discussions on the state of SDN and NFV.
- Srinivas Vegesna, CEO, Criterion Networks
