Open, Open, Open: OpenDaylight Helium is Here [feedly]

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Open, Open, Open: OpenDaylight Helium is Here
// OpenDaylight blogs

Everywhere you turn these days you hear the term "open" in networking. The idea of openness in networking has come a long way in the past year and it's now considered the de facto standard way that we'll achieve interoperability and innovation.

OpenDaylight is taking another step closer to helping the industry achieve the vision of SDN and NFV with its second software release called Helium announced today. It's aimed at developers and users who are progressing on their journey to SDN. But the most unique thing about Helium is what it signifies for the industry. A year ago conversations around SDN were all about protocols or proprietary controllers. Today it's all about openness. I fully expect to see many vendors announce and release products based on OpenDaylight Helium. Here is one early example, but be on the lookout for many more!

Andrew Lerner of Gartner pointed out on his blog that "[p]erhaps the biggest benefit of SDN is that it fosters long-term innovation in networking. With SDN and de-coupling of hardware/software, you can now innovate independently in hardware and software. So software innovation isn't held back by hardware and vice-versa. Note: This is why there is so much importance associated with the Northbound API initiatives that should come out of OpenDaylight and ONF."

This is exactly what the industry needs to truly accelerate adoption of SDN. Opening up the platform means innovation can occur above, below and around it, which is one of the key benefits that any open source project provides be it Linux or Hadoop or Docker and Kubernetes. We call it the open source 80/20 rule, where 80 percent of technology is undifferentiated and 20 percent is where the real innovation comes in.

But needless to say there's more work for us to do. Things like application policy will be a critical part of SDN but there are no concrete answers on exactly what form that will take. Group Based Policy's inclusion in ODL is a great start but we are likely to see evolution and/or other projects as others debate how policy should be implemented. The mechanics of a working service abstraction layer--one way or multiple, model-driven?--will continue to be iterated on, discussed and debated. In OpenDaylight, anyone can join these conversations and help shape the future of SDN whether by writing code or voicing and opinion. There's a place for all of that and I highly encourage you to listen or join in on those discussions. The seeds have been sown and I look forward to a fruitful year for SDN in 2015.

OpenDaylight is hosting a live webinar and QA session with SDNCentral.com called OpenDaylight Helium: Paving the Way for SDN Innovation on Wednesday, November 12 at 10:00 a.m. PT. Presenters include Neela Jacques and OpenDaylight Technical Steering Committee member Colin Dixon. For details and to pre-register, visit: http://nfv.io/YkhMkI.  

 

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