Sanjeev Mervana, senior director of IP NGN at Cisco Systems, talks about the emerging SDN use cases, the OpenDaylight project and Cisco ONE
SDN Outlook: SDN seems like a simple concept, why is there so much confusion in the industry today?
Mervana: SDN has evolved to mean different things to different people. SDN's initial debut was in the data center space. Since then, it's been adapted and been coupled with additional technologies in other service domains like mobility, video and NGN.
An NGN architect views SDN and its value proposition differently than a data center architect and as a result you'll get different definitions on what SDN is from each. Service providers overwhelmingly believe that for SDN to fulfill its promise its concepts must be applied across the whole infrastructure, from the applications to the end-user devices. This is the approach that Cisco is taking.
What is the goal of OpenDaylight?
OpenDaylight is a collaborative, open-source project initiated by the Linux Foundation to advance software defined networking (SDN). OpenDaylight is a community-led, open, industry-supported framework, consisting of code and blueprints, for accelerating adoption, fostering new innovation, reducing risk and creating a more transparent approach to SDN.
Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems.
How does OpenDaylight fit with SDN work being done by the Open Networking Foundation?
OpenDaylight project work and the work undertaken by ONF are complimentary to each other. OpenDaylight seeks to advance the expansion of a developer community for open source technology based on SDN. The OpenDaylight project uses OpenFlow, a protocol developed out of ONF. A robust developer community has the potential to accelerate the adoption and evolution of SDN.
Cisco is one of the first contributors to the OpenDaylight project with its Cisco ONE Controller technology. Cisco will continue to be a contributor to this community and drive its mission.
With members likely to push their own technologies and standards, how will the initiative get all parties to work together?
To facilitate an open ecosystem, OpenDaylight was structured with an open source license, open design, development and contribution model as well as an appropriate, open governance model. The project is a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project and implements many open source best practices familiar to other leading projects. Further, any individual company or organization can engage directly and immediately begin shaping the future of the project.
OpenDaylight is open to anyone. Anyone can develop and contribute code, get elected to the Technical Steering Committee, get voted onto the Board, or help steer the project forward in any number of ways. Developers who are elected to the Technical Steering Committee or who participate as project leaders will provide leadership regarding the technical direction of OpenDaylight.