Startup Participation in ONF Drives Innovation and Competition for Customer Benefit
PALO ALTO, Calif., June 17, 2014 – The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), today announced that 24 qualified SDN startup companies have joined the organization since its establishment of a startup membership category in January 2014. This new membership category was created to encourage innovation and help startup organizations become more actively involved in building a competitive open SDN ecosystem.
To qualify for the ONF startup membership category, an organization must be within two years of its incorporation. Membership fees for startup companies are reduced from $30,000 a year to $1,000 a year with no difference in membership privileges.
“ONF launched the startup membership category earlier this year to enable contributions from a wider range of SDN organizations for the ultimate benefit of end users,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “Startup organizations offer new, out-of-the box thinking to networking. Bringing them into ONF drives a new level of innovation, helping to advance commercialization and adoption of open SDN.”
ONF startup membership began with six companies when the category was announced in January 2014 – Criterion Networks India Pvt. Ltd., Corsa Technology, GuardiCore Ltd., Konodrac, Tallac Networks, and Xinguard Inc. Eighteen additional startup SDN organizations are now participating in ONF. Among these are Blue Ocean Networks Pty LTD, Friesty, Gencore Systems, GreeNet, Intelliment Security, Saisei, Sanctum Networks Ltd, SDN Essentials, Stormvium, and xNet Technologies Inc.
Creation of the ONF startup membership category has been met with great enthusiasm from these member companies:
“SDN and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) are the most significant changes in telecom technology that we have seen in the 21st century so far. ONF and the vision of its Board of Directors can be credited as the catalysts for these seismic shifts,” said Dr. Frank Ruhl, director of Blue Ocean Networks. “For a startup company, this is an immense opportunity to be a part of. Blue Ocean Networks is focused on helping customers realize this emerging chance to innovate their networks for business advantage. We are working with ONF and offering consultancy services and training to help further the vision of SDN and NFV in next generation networks.”
"ONF participation provides a great platform and collaboration opportunity to engage and contribute with the larger open SDN ecosystem worldwide. This is especially more meaningful if you are not an established player or located in the Silicon Valley,” said Srinivas Vegesna, CEO of Criterion Networks India Pvt. Ltd. “Criterion Networks is glad to be one of its first members in this category."
“One of the first things we did at Corsa when we emerged on the scene was join ONF,” said Bruce Gregory, CEO of Corsa Technology. “Startups bring huge technical innovation to the table, which is critical in early markets, but key industry organizations provide the collaborative environment that enables system-wide standards to be created to advance business solutions. ONF has been the driver in SDN, furthering new standards and triggering new markets that have led to our success here at Corsa.”
“Gencore Systems is delighted to become a member of the ONF family. Our company has followed ONF with great interest, and we appreciate the organization’s inclusive nature and participation from various stakeholders in the SDN ecosystem,” said Dr. Boon Thau Loo, co-founder and lead scientist at Gencore Systems and associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “An early-stage startup and spinoff from the University of Pennsylvania, Gencore Systems uses SDN technology for monitoring, securing, and optimizing data centers and networks. ONF provides us an excellent avenue for learning about the latest in SDN technology, and we look forward to having more interactions with members of ONF as our company grows and progresses.”
“A startup from China, GreeNet is working closely with Chinese carriers on their SDN solutions. ONF’s PlugFest events provide us a platform to test our own SDN controller with other vendors’ switches to check consistency while verifying our functions and performance,” said Zhuoyuan Chai, director of product at GreeNet. “ONF is the SDN organization that has stewarded the OpenFlow® standard for the networking industry, and we look forward to contributing from the perspective of Chinese carriers. ONF is a great gateway connecting technology and business worldwide.”
“This ONF membership category boosts startup contributions to the SDN ecosystem and accelerates innovation and disruption, which are the promises of SDN and the essence of startups” said Pavel Gurvich, CEO of GuardiCore Ltd. “As an ONF member company, we are excited about the opportunity to reinvent network security, scalable to terabits per-second traffic rates inside data centers.”
“Intelliment Security applauds ONF’s decision to promote the participation of startups, as startups are where considerable innovation happens,” said Sergio Pozo, co-founder and CEO of Intelliment Security, a spinoff company of the University of Seville. “Intelliment will work with the SDN community to foster multi-vendor interoperability in security and to help define the key APIs that address real-world SDN use cases for security policy operations.”
“Konodrac joined ONF to be aware of the latest developments regarding SDN and to develop products based in that paradigm. The main benefits for us have been participating in Working Groups and connecting with other companies that are working on SDN implementation in commercial products,” said Jordi Gilabert, CEO and founder of Konodrac. “As an operational analytics and security product company, we are convinced that SDN features will be of much interest to our clients in the near future.”
“It’s great to be part of the ONF community. Open SDN and NFV deliver huge value and will dramatically change how carriers and enterprises do business,” said Bill Beckett, founder and CEO of Saisei. “Saisei provides, in software, the greater real-time visibility and control over applications, users, and locations that companies will require for successful migration to SDN and NFV. We’ll be working closely with other ONF members to share technology innovations and ensure seamless network integration and deployment for customers globally.”
“SDN Essentials joined ONF to get involved in shaping the next wave of network design and architecture. ONF is setting the standards for open SDN, and this is our chance to contribute to the community by helping drive standards with the requirements that customers are asking for,” said Doug Marschke, CTO and founder of SDN Essentials. “As a startup, the initial cost of ONF membership was too high for us to get involved. The startup membership category gives us, and companies like us, the ability to participate in ONF, and it also shows our clients that we are truly involved in SDN.”
“ONF’s standardization activities enable Tallac to innovate faster and market our solutions to customers more efficiently,” said Bill Johnson, president and co-founder of Tallac Networks.
“Xinguard mainly develops OpenFlow® controllers, and in cooperation with fellow ONF member company Pica8 as our OpenFlow® switch platform, we discovered ONF as a resource,” said Kae Hsu, CEO at Xinguard Inc. “We are particularly interested in learning about effective SDN migration and progress in the latest ONF extensions to quickly establish our blueprint and identify potential customers. The ONF startup membership category will help us differentiate ourselves amongst many of our main competitors.”
“xNet sees ONF as the organization that is spearheading the networking technology (NT) to networking information technology (NIT) transformation through its open networking initiatives,” said Ares Kao, CEO of xNet Technologies Inc. “xNet is delighted to be part of this great paradigm shift and is privileged to have the opportunity to contribute our efforts and share our thoughts with the open networking and SDN communities worldwide.”
For more information regarding ONF startup membership, please visit https://opennetworking.org/membership/startup-members. A full listing of ONF member companies can be accessed at https://opennetworking.org/membership/member-listing.
About ONF
Launched in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo!, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a growing nonprofit organization with more than 140 members whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of open SDN. ONF promotes open SDN and OpenFlow® technologies and standards while fostering a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customers, and users. For further details visit the ONF website at: https://opennetworking.org.
