Networking Vendors Work Together on OpenDaylight SDN Project

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Nearly all of the world’s major networking vendors have announced that they are working on a new open source project related to software-defined networking (SDN). Called OpenDaylight, the project hopes to boost interest in SDN by ensuring compatibility among vendors.

The Wall Street Journal’s Clint Boulton reported, “Hoping to jumpstart a fragmented and slow-developing market for a new kind of networking software, Cisco Systems Inc., IBM Corp., and other leading networking equipment vendors announced Monday they are joining forces to create the OpenDaylight Project, an open source framework they say will ensure their products work properly together. The companies will contribute software code, engineers, and millions of dollars to the joint effort, in a highly unusual effort to boost the market for software defined networking products.”

Enterprise Networking Planet’s Sean Michael Kerner noted, “The OpenDaylight project’s supporter list includes: Arista Networks, Big Switch Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, Ericsson, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Nuage Networks, PLUMgrid, Red Hat and VMware The goal of OpenDaylight is to help create a common open source SDN platform that will advance the state of networking for everyone.”

PCWorld’s Stephen Lawson explained, “SDN is designed to turn networks into programmable platforms instead of collections of boxes that have to be managed on their own. While virtualized servers and storage can be reconfigured and moved around quickly from a central management point, networks still require many manual changes. SDN emerged through development of the OpenFlow protocol and the formation of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) in 2011 to standardize the technology. But since then, networking vendors have developed other SDN tools on their own, saying OpenFlow solves only some parts of the problem. OpenDaylight is a development body and will be complementary to ONF, which is a standards body.”

Quentin Hardy with The New York Times observed, “In some ways, OpenDaylight looks like a more efficient version of the kind of industrial standards body that governs the creation of radio systems for cellphones. While ostensibly impartial, these bodies have often been highly political and could delay technology deployment for years while companies fought to have their technology incorporated into common use…. The OpenDaylight participants may have decided it’s just more efficient to get to work, and work on the parts of their technologies that mean something to customers, than to fight each other over details. OpenDaylight could also lower customer resistance to adopting S.D.N., as there will be fewer concerns about incompatible technologies.”