Restructuring Drives Next Generation of Network Transformation
SAN FRANCISCO, September 12, 2017 – The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), an operator-led consortium with the mission of transforming networks into agile platforms for service delivery, today announced the culmination of its restructuring into an open source centric organization.
ONF has completed the assumption of all ON.Lab operations, realigned all work as interrelated open source projects, and combined the communities of the organizations. This strategy is already yielding results, with new operators joining the ONF and with industry analysts predicting broad impact of the ONF’s projects – particularly CORD™ (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter).
"CORD, unlike many other projects that only address parts of the puzzle, offers a holistically-designed, fully-integrated, end-to-end solution ready for deployment,” said Roz Roseboro, senior analyst of data center infrastructure and MANO for Heavy Reading. “It's a way for service providers to prove that this whole new architecture and process can work. Heavy Reading forecasts that the majority of communications service providers (CSPs) will use CORD by 2020 to at least some degree, and nearly 40% of all end-customers (residential, wireless and enterprise, collectively) will have service provided by COs or their equivalents using CORD by mid-2021. We expect CORD will enable service providers to more effectively compete with web-scale operators while speeding network automation and innovation.”
Today the ONF is announcing a number of recent milestones that now complete its recent transformation, including:
- AT&T taking additional leadership responsibilities
- Turk Telekom joining as the newest operator partner
- Formation of new open source projects
- Transformation of the ONF membership structure
- Introduction and demonstration of a suite of new M-CORD capabilities at MWC Americas, reinforcing M-CORD’s role as the leading platform for 5G innovation
AT&T to Take Additional Leadership Role
Andre Fuetsch, president of AT&T LABS and chief technology officer, has been elected as chair of the ONF Board. AT&T was a founding partner and long-time supporter of ON.Lab, and is reinforcing its support with the assumption of this new leadership role.
Turk Telekom joins ONF as a Partner Member
The ONF’s impact is being felt worldwide, and a notable confirmation of this impact can be seen in Turk Telekom, Turkey’s oldest telecommunications agency, recently joining the ONF as a partner member.
New Projects
The ONF is a community-of-communities. In addition to CORD and ONOS™, it hosts multiple open source projects that promote a combinatorial effect with projects building on each other to have a greater overall impact. To this end, the ONF has recently chartered a number of new projects, including:
- Open Disaggregated Transport Network (ODTN) - Leveraging the economics of whitebox disaggregated optical networking components and SDN control to build open source solutions for carrier backbone networks. For more details, click here.
- Open Information Model and Tooling (OIM&T) - Building next generation standardized network control interfaces entirely as software defined standards. First defined in the UML modeling language, tools automatically generate Yang and Netconf code intended to update legacy SNMP management standards for the modern era. For more details, click here.
- Open Transport Configuration & Control (OTC&C) - Using the work of the OIM&T project to build common configuration and control interfaces for transport networks, defining these interfaces with open source software and software-defined standards. For more details, click here.
Updated Membership Model to support a global and diverse member base
To support the merged communities of the ONF and ON.Lab, an optimized membership structure is being announced to serve the needs of our broad spectrum of members. Tracks are available for companies wishing to contribute engineering resources via open source contributions and for companies who benefit more from consumption of the ONF’s work and in return support the mission financially. An additional tier recognizes companies now contributing both with engineering talent and financially, entitling these companies to a new spectrum of benefits. Details on the updated membership structure and benefits can be found here.
“We are at the forefront of a massive transformation of the networking ecosystem,” said Guru Parulkar, executive director of ONF. “Recognizing that open source is transforming our industry at an unprecedented pace, we set out to optimize the ONF to embrace and further drive this revolution. We’re very pleased to have now completed our metamorphosis. We are also humbled by the success and impact our projects are having worldwide, and excited to embrace the work ahead.”
About ONF
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 Communications, Turk Telekom and Verizon, the ONF has now merged operations with ON.Lab to create a single organization driving vast transformation across the operator space. For further information visit https://opennetworking.org.
