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Open Networking Foundation Names New Vice President of Standards and Membership

Timon Sloane Joins ONF to Drive Organization’s Efforts in Standards, Certifications, and Membership

PALO ALTO, Calif., December 6, 2016 – The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), today announced the appointment of Timon Sloane as vice president of standards and membership. Timon joins ONF to lead the organization’s efforts in three key areas:

  • Standards development, including ongoing work on OpenFlow®
  • The ONF-Certified SDN Professional (OCSP) Program
  • ONF member relations

“Timon is a seasoned networking executive with a strong track record and broad experience that includes product development, product management, and strategic technology consulting,” said Guru Parulkar, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “Part of Timon’s experience includes work within standards organizations, specifically the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF®) for over 10 years. Timon is uniquely qualified to lead ONF’s standards activity, especially as it makes a transition to software-defined standards and to work with the membership so they can contribute more and get more value from ONF. We are excited to welcome Timon to the organization and look forward to his contributions in helping us achieve our mission through the creation of software-defined standards.”

In his role as Vice President of Standards and Membership, Timon’s primary role is to drive activities within the organization relating to OpenFlow, bridging the activities pertaining to standards with open source initiatives, and bringing standards and open source efforts under a single umbrella. Timon will also lead the OCSP Program to build and enhance the worldwide footprint of ONF’s skills certifications. Additionally, Timon will work closely with current and potential ONF membership to ensure they attain the most value from ONF and that the full community is working together towards a common goal of accelerating the adoption of SDN. 

“ONF has experienced remarkable success in driving innovation and accelerating the adoption of SDN,” said Timon. “I’ve been asked to come on board to help lead the community into a new era of open source driven standards activity. In order for SDN to reach its full potential, we are embarking on a journey to bring standards and open source projects together to accelerate time-to-market while maximizing the impact we have on the marketplace. I am very excited to join ONF as this pivotal point in the organization’s evolution and look forward to working with our many member companies as we navigate this exciting new phase in the evolution of open networking.”

Prior to this new role, Timon provided product and management consulting services to numerous technology firms, most recently with Ericsson where he was driving product strategy for the networking product lines. His prior experience also includes executive roles in product management, marketing and engineering for firms such as Matisse Networks, Extreme Networks, NET, FlowWise and SCO. Timon received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

About ONF
Launched in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo!, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a growing nonprofit organization with more than 130 members whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of open SDN. ONF promotes open SDN and OpenFlow technologies and standards while fostering a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customers, and users. For further details visit the ONF website at: https://opennetworking.org.

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