The Linux Foundation this week announced its intention to develop an open source framework and orchestration for network functions virtualization and software-defined networking.
China Mobile and Huawei offered details on the OPEN-Orchestrator Project news this week at Mobile World Congress. Others involved include Brocade, China Telecom, DynaTrace, Ericsson, F5 Networks, GigaSpaces, Infoblox, Intel, KT, Red Hat, Raisecom, Riverbed, and ZTE.
"China born and global in nature, OPEN-O will unite industry forces to set up the world's first SDN and NFV unified orchestrator, serving as an important step in promoting deeper convergence among SDN and NFV technologies and innovation in the networking industry," said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation.
Speaking of bringing together NFV and SDN (and of Ericsson, which is part of the initiative discussed above), as I wrote in another posting today, that company this week announced the integration of its Cloud Manager and SDN Controller to provide NFV management and SDN control in a single solution.
As for The Linux Foundation, OPEN-O is just one of the new efforts it has announced recently.
The group earlier this month announced a new project called FD.io. It aims to provide an IO services framework for the next wave of network and storage software. The group already has released its initial software and is forming a validation test lab. Companies involved in the FD.io group effort include 6WIND, Brocade, Cavium, Cisco, Comcast, Ericsson, Huawei, Inocybe Technologies, Intel Corp., Mesosphere, Metaswitch Networks (Project Calico), PLUMgrid, and Red Hat.
The Linux Foundation also has been busy with its Zephyr Project. This effort aims to build a real-time operating system for Internet of Things devices. Federico Guerrini, writing for Forbes, says this project could have important and positive ramifications for the IoT. He notes that “by providing a scalable, customizable, secure and open source OS, to be used across multiple architectures, the Zephyr Project could help solve many of the current constraints that held back, so far, IoT from becoming really mainstream.” He adds that Linux is also very good at running with constrained resources, a consumption factor that tends to be important for IoT as well.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle
