Telecom and Networking Communications Today: Open SDN: Move to Open SDN in the Offing

Open source technology is expected to play an important role in software-defined networking as per the communication service providers, albeit, it is unclear how the freely distributed tools will change their relationship with traditional vendors.

Service providers are confident that open SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV) will become the foundations of their networks. Carriers believe SDN will eventually reduce costs and create networks that can be reconfigured faster to improve or launch new services for business customers. Service providers are testing a variety of SDN-related open technology, including OpenFlow, OpenStack, and Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV).They are also testing whether open source alternatives could replace the intelligence in proprietary switches from network vendors. Carriers that can run the software on commodity x86 hardware powered by an SDN operating system could have more bargaining power in negotiating deals with respective vendors.

Read more at Telecom and Networking Communications Today.