Open Network Featured Article

Verizon (News - Alert) has joined the ONOS project, the open-source SDN Network Operating System (ONOS) for service providers.

ONOS is a carrier-grade SDN network operating system architected to provide high availability, scalability, performance, and rich northbound and southbound abstractions. The ONOS project recently joined the Linux Foundation as a Collaborative Project and its community works to provide best-in-class open-source SDN platforms and network function virtualization (NFV) tools that accelerate production deployments and use cases.

As part of ONOS, Verizon has committed to collaborating with other service and solutions providers to drive innovative ONOS and ONOS-based solutions and requirements to solve the challenges of developing scalable, high-available software-defined networking (SDN) architectures.

The idea is that ONOS will be able to rapidly develop the apps and use cases carriers want, working through proofs of concept, lab trials and market trials to full production deployments using feedback and input from the entire ONOS community.

Alex Jinsung Choi, CTO and executive vice president at SK Telecom (News - Alert), noted that Verizon’s mobile heritage will be one main development area.

"We share a vision for building 5G mobile networks using open networking technologies,” Choi said. “We look forward to collaborating with Verizon and other partners to accelerate adoption of 5G with open source SDN and NFV solutions using ONOS."

ON.Lab and ONOS' community also includes other global service providers, including AT&T (News - Alert), China Unicom, NTT Communications and vendor partners.

"Verizon's participation, along with other service providers, strengthens the ONOS partnership and the ecosystem," said Guru Parulkar, executive director and Board Member at ON (News - Alert).Lab's ONOS project. "Verizon brings value to the ONOS partnership in terms of new requirements, possible use cases and insights that will shape ONOS today and in the future. We look forward to working with Verizon on the solutions that include CORD, M-CORD and packet-optical convergence."

John Donovan (News - Alert), senior executive vice president, AT&T Technology & Operations, added, "We're big believers in using open-source platforms and software to build the next-generation of cloud-based connectivity services and capabilities for our customers, and we're glad to collaborate with Verizon in this vision.”