ONOS Joining the Linux Foundation

The Open Networking Operating System (ONOS), a SDN controller platform and incumbent of Open Networking Lab (ON.lab), recently joined the Linux Foundation. What does this mean for the industry, since The Linux Foundation already hosts an open source controller platform called OpenDaylight? Here’s our perspective on the partnership.

ONOS has been developed in concert with leading service providers (AT&T, NTT Communications), with demanding network vendors (Ciena, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, NEC), research & education (R&E) network operators (Internet2, CNIT, CREATE-NET), collaborators (SRI, Infoblox), and with the ONF. As a result, ONOS has been purpose-built for service provider networks to provide high availability (HA), scale-out, and performance. ONOS released its fourth version of the software (1.3.0) named “Drake” last month.

The Linux Foundation is a non-profit technology trade association charted to promote, protect and advance Linux and collaborative development. OpenDaylight’s solution caters to service providers, data centers, MSOs, and enterprises. The organization has close to 50 members and about 500 developers contributing to the project. OpenDaylight released its third version of software dubbed “Lithium” in June 2015.

At Packet Design, we welcome the collaboration of ONOS and OpenDaylight. With the proliferation of mobile devices, OTT services, and distribution of content across the cloud, service providers are facing challenges to make their networks agile and efficient enough to meet the exponential bandwidth demands and create review streams with innovative services and new business models. Packet Design believes combining ONOS’ architectural strength and OpenDaylight’s versatile, model-based approach and plugins will make a powerful solution for customers.

Software integrators will benefit from this combined solution by interfacing with only one “Global Controller.” At Packet Design, we have integrated our SDN Service Assurance platform first with OpenDaylight’s Lithium. With a plugin-based architecture, our SDN Service Assurance platform will be capable of integrating with any controller platform.

Conclusion

We agree with OpenDaylight Executive Director Neela Jacques on the short-term challenges that this collaboration will pose. In the long term, however, we look forward to a “Global Controller” platform that combines the best of both worlds from ONOS and OpenDaylight.