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ONF Establishes a European Presence to Serve Growing European Community

Berlin Facility to Help Accelerate European Operators’ Deployments of ONF Open Source Platforms

BERLIN, Germany, March 11, 2020 -- The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced it has created a new ONF Engineering Cluster (OEC) in Berlin, Germany.  The European OEC has been created to complement ONF’s Silicon Valley presence and better serve the growing base of ONF members across Europe by providing local collaboration and support. Establishing a development office in Europe enables the ONF team to accelerate ONF development and production roll outs, as well as grow operator and supply chain participation and ONF membership in the region.

ONF Partner Deutsche Telekom, has championed and bootstrapped the creation of the ONF Engineering Cluster in Berlin,  contributing use of the facility which includes a hardware lab, offices and community space. Edgecore and Infosys, two of ONF’s supply chain partners, have also made substantial commitments to help bootstrap the European OEC.  Together, they have collaboratively contributed the critical mass needed to launch this new facility.

In collaboration with Deutsche Telekom and Turk Telekom, a key 2020 focus for the European OEC will be production rollouts of ONF’s open source platforms SEBA and VOLTHA. In addition, ONF will increase its collaboration with European operators and rally the supply chain to build a stronger ecosystem and broader traction for ONF’s open source platforms throughout Europe and globally.

The European OEC will serve as a nucleus for the European open networking developer community. ONF partners like Radisys and other contributing members have already relocated technical staff into this facility for closer collaboration with ONF.  ONF members are welcome to use the space to collaborate with the community in much the same way that ONF’s Silicon Valley Lab is used as a hub of collaboration and community activity. As part of the ONF model, partners will embed engineers at our European facilities alongside ONF full time engineers.  Additionally, the space will be used for project meetings, working sessions, lab facilities and as a place to catalyze community collaboration. In this regard, this new Berlin facility is an extension of the Menlo Park facility.

“We are excited to build a closer relationship with ONF through the creation of the ONF Engineering Cluster in Berlin and expect it will accelerate production rollout of SEBA and VOLTHA platforms which are foundational elements essential for our next generation access network”, said Jochen Appel, VP Fixed & Mobile Service Core Platforms, Deutsche Telekom.

“ONF continues to show the desire and determination of creating new standards in telecom industry by residing in Europe. Therefore, operators and supply chain partners in Europe will strengthen their position by increasing their contact with ONF. We believe open source SEBA will play a key role in network transformation in the future. In this direction, we are making contributions to productize SEBA with our group company NETSIA”, said Yusuf Kıraç, CTO, Turk Telekom.

“Europe is fast becoming a hub of activity for ONF projects, and Edgecore Networks is very pleased to further our commitment to the ONF with the support of the creation of ONF’s new office in Berlin,” said George Tchaparian, President & CEO, Edgecore Networks.  Open source and Open – Disaggregated Networking are fast transforming the way operators are developing their next-generation solutions, and building a WW collaborative community, is key to the continued success of open source.”

“Infosys is pleased to be an enabler of the creation of ONF’s footprint in Europe. Collaboration is the foundation of the open source movement, and having a dedicated office staffed by ONF’s technical experts alongside experts from members like Infosys will enable effective outcomes to support operators and the broader community throughout Europe,” said Nitesh Bansal, SVP & Global Head Engineering Services, Infosys.

“The leadership and support of Deutsche Telekom along with the contributions from Edgecore and Infosys have been instrumental in creating the ONF Engineering Cluster, and it could not have been done without them.  Deployment of solutions based on ONF open source platforms is ramping, and establishing a presence closer to our members in Europe will help the teams collaborate to ensure successful deployments,” said Aseem Parikh, Vice President, Solutions and Partnerships, ONF.

Learn more about ONF and becoming an ONF member.

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 https://opennetworking.org

 

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