Open Network Featured Article

Specifications are vital to every market that allows for development. Without specifications, development projects would be haring off in every direction, leaving potential users baffled as to just what the “best” tools in the field are. Open networking is no exception, and specifications help keep the market running. Radisys recently contributed to the pool of specifications that make projects better as its CG-OpenRack-19 specification was officially accepted by the Open Compute Project (OCP (News - Alert)).

CG-OpenRack-19 has a basis in the earlier OCP release of Open Rack, which was itself specifically geared toward the construction and establishment of web scale data center operations. Since Radisys—itself a member of OCP at the silver level—turned to several partners in both the manufacturing and communications service provider (CSP (News - Alert)) arena to develop CG-OpenRack-19, the end result should be a versatile and useful system.

In fact, Radisys' DCEngine is one platform solution that calls on the new specification, and several major service providers are already putting tools built around the new specification to use. Since the specification calls for specific interoperability requirements, its users find it a versatile, simple, and highly modular approach, which makes for less time spent in setup and greater cost savings over many common open networking alternatives.

Radisys CTO Andrew Alleman commented “Radisys is actively contributing to open systems and networks, with open source contributions in both software and hardware. With OCP, we saw a great approach and technology that is bigger than just one company. We worked closely with service providers and other vendors on the CG-OpenRack-19 contribution to bring a carrier-grade version of OCP Open Rack hardware to service provider networks. We are pleased that the specification is OCP-accepted and already achieving traction in service provider data centers.”

When a specification can be actively demonstrated to save money for potential users, it's no wonder there's a rush to use it, as has been seen at least somewhat with CG-OpenRack-19. Cost-cutting is a natural part of business operations as businesses seek to find necessary capital with which to invest, and often find that by getting rid of a few lesser-performing options, there's breathing room sufficient to put behind those that do produce well. Maybe just turning to CG-OpenRack-19-based systems won't deliver the level of savings desired, but it can help, and has clearly helped already.

Nothing succeeds like success, and with CG-OpenRack-19 already delivering success on several open networking fronts, it's going to be worth sticking with this new specification to see what it can fully do in the field.