Join industry experts for a discussion on how open platforms could pave the way toward an innovative way to build Internet applications and services leveraging on the emerging “softwarization” of networks and data-centers.
One of the main reasons behind the emergence of software-defined networking (SDN) and the recent rise of network function virtualization (NFV) was the need for operators to take better, more flexible and cheaper control over their network. The OpenFlow protocol and ONF, its standardization body, played a key role in gathering interested parties and to form critical mass around SDN. However, the common perception is that the simultaneous availability of several open-source tools has been fundamental to give a strong push toward the paradigm change proposed by SDN and NFV promoters. Recent initiatives like OpenDaylight (supported by big companies like Cisco Systems, Ericsson, and IBM – to name a few – and targeting an open community of developers willing to contribute to an open-source based SDN controller) or Neutron/OpenStack (and its full set of different networking plugins including Cisco Nexus, Nicira NVP, Open vSwitch, NEC..) are already becoming de-facto reference marketplaces for a wide community of developers that are building new Internet applications on top, thus unveiling a true application-defined networking paradigm, or exploring novel solutions to optimize the usage of hardware resources for both OPEX and energy savings.
The session will address the following questions:
- Which are the most promising (available or incoming) open platforms that will model the SDN/NFV scenarios in the years to come?
- How open should these platform be (open-source versus API-only models)?
- How to engage third-party developers?
- How can network service development cycles be shortened by and open, collaborative, integrated environments?
- What is the roadmap to create an open marketplace for NFV services?
- How can network security be improved by an user-centric approach relying on virtualized security applications?
- How network platform as a service can promote to faster and more flexible service introduction?
- How can Service Providers switch to a more agile/DevOps way of working?
The goal of the session is to provide an overview of the current open platform initiatives in the field of SDN/NFV and to explore what is next and how European Industry and other stakeholders like SME and research centers are organizing themselves to promote novel open platforms.
Composition of the speakers. In order to foster the discussion with the participants, the panelists have been selected selected to represent the most important stakeholders of this novel ecosystem. The objective is to present best practices and on-going initiatives (like running EU projects pursuing this approach), emphasizing advantages, drawbacks and challenges behind open-platforms.
The targeted audience is:
- Researchers and developers from industry and academia working on SDN/NFV and Cloud
- Entrepreneurs willing to explore the opportunities behind the emergence of such novel open platforms and their usage
- Innovation leaders interested to know how the telecommunications industry is moving toward new business models urged by the adoption of the novel SDN/NFV paradigm
Session proponent projects:
