The annual SDN & OpenFlow World Congress has become the annual go-to event for the telecom industry as it transitions from the traditional Central Office model to the virtualized data centers of the future. This year’s event running October 10-14 has moved to The Hague, Netherlands, and I expect to see many of the world’s leading innovators in attendance. Last year’s show was all about “data domination.” Here are my predictions for the themes that will emerge at the conference this year.
Hyperscale data centers become the norm. SDN and NFV are the key technologies that are accelerating cloud networking innovation while significantly reducing the costs of building and operating networks. These virtualized data centers are the answer for “data domination.” Communications service providers to meet real-time demand for services, while taking advantage of economies of scale, security, scalability and lower OpEx costs.
Open is mandatory. Communications service providers are rapidly transitioning from proprietary hardware infrastructure solutions to software-centric networks that heavily leverage open source software and hardware. One key initiative that Radisys is deeply involved in is the open CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) project. CORD presents a fully open architectural blueprint for transforming Central Offices to utilize the best of SDN, NFV and cloud technologies for rapid, automated service delivery. It delivers an integrated platform with merchant silicon, white box switches, ONOS, OpenStack, Docker and XOS. For more information, go check out a recent discussion on the topic I gave for RCR Wireless.
High-performance platforms are required. These platforms – based on commodity hardware and open source software and adapted to telecom requirements – are needed to elastically scale up to thousands of virtualized network functions. Radisys’ DCEngine, based on the Open Compute Project (OCP) CG-Openrack-19 specification and integrated with open source software, transforms Central Offices into SDN-enabled virtualization data centers.
More than 200 experts will be speaking at this year’s event. I’ll be speaking on the topic of deploying hyperscale SDN and NFV in next-generation data centers during the technology forum of the Congress on Thursday, October 13 from 2:50 to 3:10. If you’re not able to catch the session, I’d be happy to meet with you at the Radisys Booth #16. Please contact sales@radisys.com to schedule a meeting. I look forward to seeing you there!
