This session will attempt to reveal the potential and benefits of Software Defined Networking (SDN) as the basis of a network operating system for control and management of transport networks for telecom network operators and Data Centre providers. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is becoming an established trend in operation and management of today’s networks from Data Centre to telecomm operators’ infrastructures. This trend has been recently reinforced by the evolution of network services through Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) and the consolidation of SDN protocols such as OpenFlow that support decoupling of network control and data plane.  SDN brings a promising solution to network operators and Data Center providers for reducing the complexity and costs of deploying and managing their heterogeneous networks and services. However, an SDN-based network operating system supporting existing and emerging transport network technologies that will lay the foundation for true network programmability at all network layers is still missing. 

Currently Software Defined Networking (SDN) is mainly applied to layer 2 packet switched networks and data centre infrastructures. Most of the early SDN developments were led by the US. However, over the past few years Europe has played a leading role in the development of layer1 and layer 2 Transport SDN with the aim to support the operation and management of a variety of infrastructures with increasing need of convergence spanning form Data Centre to telecomm operator networks. There are few flagship SDN European projects addressing transport technologies such as STRAUSS, CONTENT, SODALES, OFELIA, IDEALIST, COSIGN and NetIDE. Also EU vendors such as ADVA and ALU as well as EU operators such as BT and Telefonica are among the first that are actively working on the development and deployment of SDN enabled transport technologies. However, a number of open issues still need to be addressed including architectural choices, network operating systems for control and management of optical networks for telecom network operators and Data Centre providers, software platforms and implementation, transition of existing network solutions, optimal exploitation of the SDN capabilities, interoperability issues etc. The goal of this session is to address these open issues and explore recent research developments related to Transport SDN, to encourage direct interaction between industry and academia and assist in the exploitation and realization of the potential of software defined networks. This session will bring together leading experts from research and industry to discuss solutions for extending SDN frameworks, protocols and technologies to support advances in access, metro and core networks with particular emphasis on converged networks supporting Data Centre connectivity.