Reflections on recent announcements made by member companies, the momentum of ONF, and the progress of the SDN movement.
June was an incredibly fast-paced month for the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). We participated in five events worldwide in Singapore, Japan, China, and the United States. We held our third week-long ONF PlugFest, testing OpenFlow® versions 1.0, 1.2, and 1.3 in commercial and test controllers and physical as well as virtual switches. And last, but certainly far from least, we added three new member companies to the ONF roster: Coriant, TorreyPoint, and Virtela.
It was also a very busy month for ONF member companies, as evidenced by the multitude of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow-related announcements made by members in June.
Arista expanded its offerings in SDN with full support for Microsoft Open Management Infrastructure (OMI) through Arista EOS (extensible operating system) across all of its platforms.
Big Switch Networks announced a commercial SDN deployment for CSM Media Research. Its Open SDN Suite was selected as the SDN controller and application platform, and it was deployed with an OpenFlow-based Dell networking solution.
Centec Networks’ V Series Open SDN platform completed successful interoperability testing of OpenFlow® 1.3 during the third ONF PlugFest at Indiana University’s InCNTRE lab.
Cisco introduced three new Catalyst switches at Cisco Live, and it plans to offer OpenFlow® support across all of its enterprise switching and routing products in early 2014.
Coriant announced the commercial availability of its Intelligent Optical Control (IOC), leveraging SDN technology for the optimization of the optical layer.
Cyan unveiled the Blue Orbit ecosystem of partners focused on reducing operator risk and accelerating SDN benefits by testing and demonstrating real-world, multi-vendor SDN applications. Additional ONF members participating in Blue Orbit include Arista and Overture Networks.
Gigamon went public! They revealed the pricing of their initial public offering – 6,750,000 shares of common stock at $19.00 per share. Trading on the New York Stock Exchange began June 12 under the symbol GIMO and is now trading around $32.00.
Huawei launched an open-source website for the Protocol-Oblivious Forwarding (POF) project, aiming to enhance the OpenFlow® specification, while attending SDN World 2013 in Barcelona, Spain.
NoviFlow announced its agreement with Inocybe Technologies to bring together elements of their product lines, easing the introduction of OpenFlow-enabled SDN and reducing cost of deployment.
NTT Communications revealed that it will launch the On-premises Connection, the world’s first SDN-based cloud migration service, in Japan in July 2013. Availability in additional markets worldwide will follow.
Overture Networks secured a new facility of $10 million with Horizon Technology Finance Corporation to accelerate the introduction of its Ensemble Open Service Architecture™, advancing its software-defined and virtualized network services.
Pica8 announced that its open switches, supporting OpenFlow® 1.2, are helping to power the Ocean Cluster for Experimental Architectures in Networks (OCEAN) laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The OCEAN network supports SDN research, as well as work in security, cloud computing, and low-latency networks.
Spirent released support for OpenFlow® 1.3 on Spirent TestCenter, allowing network operators and vendors to measure performance, security, availability, and scalability of OpenFlow® network devices and end-to-end SDN applications. Spirent also attended the third ONF PlugFest at Indiana University.
Vello Systems announced VellOS™ 7.0, an OpenFlow-enabled scalable enterprise network OS that unifies the control of the optical, Ethernet, and virtual networking planes under common open software with a unique level of automation.
With these announcements, ONF member companies are advancing the SDN movement and embracing the OpenFlow® protocol. ONF values and supports member companies’ efforts in ensuring interoperability and discouraging vendor lock-in for the end user, for whose benefit we strive.
- Dan Pitt, Executive Director
