[April 17, 2012]

The Open Networking Foundation Celebrates One-Year Anniversary with SDN Commercial Deployments and OpenFlow Demonstrations at the Open Networking Summit

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Software-Defined Networking (SDN), is celebrating commercial deployments of SDN based on the OpenFlow networking standard. In addition, more than 20 organizations will be actively demonstrating OpenFlow capabilities at this week's 2012 Open Networking Summit.

The OpenFlow standard provides the fundamental foundation for SDN and enables networks to evolve by giving a remote, directly-programmable controller the power to modify the behavior of network devices through a well-defined "forwarding instruction set". Since its inception, ONF has worked with the Foundation's member companies to make OpenFlow-based SDN the new norm for networks. The Foundation has engaged the world's leading networking innovators and fostered industry implementation of SDN through the drafting of implementable standards, prototype demonstrations, interoperability experiments, plug fests, and the commercialization of the standard.

Commercial deployments of OpenFlow products by member company NEC (News - Alert) have been installed at enesis Hosting Solutions and Nippon Express Co., LTD. According to NEC, these customers are realizing the benefits of OpenFlow including improved productivity, cost efficiency, and new avenues of growth and revenue. Additional announcements this year are expected to highlight commercial deployments as well as announcements by vendors of associated products, platforms, and tools designed to facilitate rollout.

In addition, member company demonstrations at the Open Networking Summit this week will be showcasing the latest developments of OpenFlow and SDN technologies. Demonstrations by ONF members Broadcom, Brocade, Citrix, Dell, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, HP, IBM, Intel, IP Infusion, NEC, Netronome, NTT Communications, Radware (News - Alert), and Verizon will illustrate how the technologies can help network operators, owners, carriers, and more.

"It's been an amazing first year," said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. "We've tripled the size of our membership to 66 companies, brought our first enterprise member company on board, issued new versions of OpenFlow and OF-Config, and made significant headway on commercializing SDN and OpenFlow as a disruptive approach to networking. OpenFlow is already being deployed or tested by the entire networking ecosystem including chip companies, system vendors, computer companies, software companies, testing companies, telecom and cable operators, data-center operators, and enterprises. Over the next year, the market will see how SDN can change how every company with a network operates and that SDN is capable of driving tremendous business value."

Dan Pitt will be serving as Program Advisor, presenting on the "Standardization and Adoption" session, and chairing the "SDN for Scale-out and Enterprise Data Centers" session at the Open Networking Summit, April 17, 2012, in Santa Clara. Media or analysts interested in one-on-one meetings should contact Katie Peterson at (408) 727-0351 or katiepeterson@mcgrathpower.com.

About ONF

Launched in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft (News - Alert), Verizon, and Yahoo!, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a nonprofit organization with over 60 members whose goal is to rethink networking and quickly and collaboratively bring to market standards and solutions. ONF will accelerate the delivery and use of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) standards and foster a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customers, and users. For further details visit the ONF website at: http://www.opennetworking.org

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