Big Switch Pitches Openness for OpenFlow

Big Switch Networks, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, marked its two-year anniversary with a call for greater openness and interoperability for software-defined networking. The Big Switch "Open SDN" architecture will be defined by three pillars:


1. Open Standards: Support for networking industry standards, including newer ones like OpenFlow, ensure better integration and interoperability today and in the future between different players within the SDN ecosystem. It allows for smooth deployment of SDN solutions into existing physical and virtual networks and for multi-vendor environments without increasing complexity.


2. Open APIs: Open APIs foster the creation of a vibrant ecosystem of infrastructure, networks services and orchestration applications. Solutions delivered by this ecosystem can transform networks into a competitive business advantage by enabling dynamic coordination between networking, compute and storage resources and by providing a tighter alignment with business priorities.


3. Open Source: Successes such as Hadoop, MySQL and Linux demonstrate the importance of open source in every major software revolution that has taken place in the past decades. As networking becomes more software-oriented, open source provides complete transparency on the quality of its code while enabling customers to benefit from contributions made by the active open source SDN community and, more importantly, prevents vendor lock-in in the new network landscape.


"SDN has the promise to change the networking landscape, helping drive innovation and increasing business agility and operational efficiency of the network," said Joe Skorupa, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. "However to reach its full potential, it must integrate with the existing ecosystem and standards."


"OpenFlow and SDN have been gaining significant momentum and, as customers adopt these technologies, it is critical they look for open standards, open APIs and open source to ensure the SDN solution they implement is future-proof," said Guido Appenzeller, Co-Founder and CEO of Big Switch Networks. "Big Switch Networks has been at the forefront of the OpenFlow standard creation, offered enterprise-grade open source SDN solutions to the community and continuously expanded its ecosystem of partners. Openness will be core to SDN success and, by relentlessly delivering it in our Open SDN™ architecture, we plan to stay ahead of the market."http://www.bigswitch.com