Dan Pitt highlights the OpenFlow® conformance testing activities taking place in the APAC region.
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ONF's Dan Pitt addresses the crowd in Nanjing, China on December 8, 2014.[/caption]
Nǐ hǎo from Nanjing, China! I’m excited to be here at what is sure to be another buzzing and bustling SDN event. It is great to be here today speaking at the China Future Network Development and Innovation Forum & Global SDN Open Networking Conference 2014. The APAC region is continuing to prove itself as a driving force behind the SDN movement, and at a rapid rate. In December of last year, we had shown a growth of companies joining the ONF member roster, and one year later we have nearly 40 members in the APAC region. With the growing number of companies concentrated in this region, we’ve seen an uptake in OpenFlow® conformance testing here.
Currently there are six companies testing at our testing facilities in the region including Centec Networks, Digital China Networks Ltd. (DCN), EstiNet Technologies, H3C Technologies, Huawei, and ZTE Corporation. All of these companies are testing their products at one of three ONF-accredited testing labs comprising of the Beijing Internet Institute (BII), the China Academy of Telecommunication Research of MIIT (CATR) in Beijing, and the Network Benchmarking Lab (NBL) in Taiwan.
Between the certification of these three global testing facilities, and the increasing number of member companies actively undergoing testing, a need for conformance testing is being cemented. Overall the momentum is showing a drive forward toward the adoption of open SDN.
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The crowd in Nanjing, China listens to Dan Pitt's keynote on December 8, 2014.[/caption]
And it’s not just ONF member companies that can test products’ OpenFlow® conformance. Last month, ONF announced that the OpenFlow® Conformance Testing Program is now open to non-members. That’s right: companies that are not members of the organization can now use the OpenFlow-conformant logo on products that pass the established testing guidelines. This is great news for the OpenFlow® ecosystem. By broadening the program to include non-members, end users will ultimately benefit as they will have added assurance that the products they purchase are OpenFlow® conformant.
Seeing the growing number of companies going through conformance testing has been eye opening. SDN is increasing in reach each day, and we’re seeing rapid adoption within the APAC region, which is a bellwether for the overall SDN movement.
It has been a delight to watch the number of companies heading to the labs to test their products for OpenFlow® conformance, and striving for interoperability. As we move into 2015 and the year of the sheep, I am looking forward to the increasing number of OpenFlow® conformant products that will be available, to a worldwide market.
- Dan Pitt, Executive Director
