With 1,300 attendees–nearly double from last year–SDN OpenFlow & World Congress in Dusseldorf was a melting pot of ideas that reflected the growing interest and demand for NFV. It was clear that open SDN and NFV are the future of carrier infrastructures. Even more evident was the focus on openness in building solutions that address critical industry challenges. In his keynote address Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation talked about how open source is redefining the networking space and why companies should utilize open source communities to solve industry issues. “Open source isn’t just a powerful business tool. It is the idea that all of us are smarter than any one of us that makes it a blockbuster,” he said.
Speaking on behalf of OPNFV, Margaret Chiosi introduced the new project saying it’s supported heavily by end users and vendors and will work with other open source projects like OpenStack and OpenDaylight: “I would say that we may not be successful if we really have to do a fork. We have to be more like a branch, working with each other. If OPNFV’s needs don’t help anybody else in the open source community, then we will lose the battle. Because the goal of this — to ‘win,’ I guess — is to ride the IT wave of all the innovation that’s happening.”
Jim, Margaret and others all emphasized the philosophy of being truly open and the value of staying involved in projects to create common solutions for the industry. Margaret made an open call to everyone interested in advancing open source NFV to participate in OPNFV, regardless of membership status, and voice their opinions on how to build an open NFV reference platform for the industry. Follow the work of OPNFV technical steering committee at: https://wiki.opnfv.org.