Networking Vendors Shifting Toward Open SDN

In a recent blog I talked about measuring success for an open source project like OpenDaylight. For OpenDaylight to overcome networking’s two greatest obstacles to SDN adoption -- technology fragmentation and duplication of efforts -- we need to unify the industry around a common, open framework and see the OpenDaylight code base leveraged into interoperable solutions for end users. I’m excited to see more and more proof that this is happening.

Last month Extreme Networks announced an SDN platform based on the OpenDaylight controller. What makes this announcement exciting is that Extreme Networks is providing a comprehensive end-to-end solution that includes network management, network access control, application analytics and wireless controller technology -- all based on OpenDaylight. I was glad to see Extreme Networks host a webinar this week discussing their SDN vision and how they are developing their solution on top of the OpenDaylight code base.

Like many other members of the OpenDaylight Project, Extreme Networks believes the network needs to evolve to deliver greater programmability and agility. They see SDN as THE critical technology to bring this reality to today’s infrastructures. We’ve seen this illustrated over and over in recent months, like in this recent Network World survey. Extreme Networks talked about how they are hearing from their users a desire to deploy SDN without disrupting their existing infrastructure and how they came to the conclusion that developing on top of an open platform like OpenDaylight was necessary to meet this critical customer need.

To see increasing numbers of vendors rejecting the idea of a fully proprietary approach and instead choosing to collaborate, contribute and ultimately leverage a common code base like the OpenDaylight controller as part of their core product roadmap is a true testament to the shift we’re seeing in networking. Customers are also becoming more vocal in their requirements for common architectures. Everything I see points to the fact that customers are looking for a standard SDN platform that all solutions can work with. I am encouraged to see OpenDaylight increasingly being viewed by users and developers alike as the best chance our industry has for such a platform.

Extreme Networks webinar recording is available here.

--@NeelaJacques