Timon Sloane, VP of Standards and Membership at ONF, explains how vendors, operators, and integrators alike can benefit from the Open Innovation Pipeline.
We announced our Open Innovation Pipeline strategy in March, which stirred plenty of excitement. The strategy, made possible by the joining of ONF and ON.Lab, provides a broadly applicable framework built on turn-key open source building blocks to deliver complete solutions for network operators. With the Open Innovation Pipeline, we are bringing together the industry in a unifying effort to advance open source networking solutions.
With network device disaggregation and the emergence of many open source platforms and components, it is too difficult and complex for a vendor or network operator to consume and reap optimal benefits from disaggregation and open source. This, combined with vendors’ natural tendencies to create proprietary solutions, are big barriers to realizing the true value proposition of disaggregation and open source. By creating the Open Innovation Pipeline, ONF intends to break down these barriers and offer greater returns to members who participate in our collaborative process.
By making active contributions to the Open Innovation Pipeline, vendors can benefit from inclusion in ONOS and CORD based solutions targeted at specific use cases, and in turn gain access to operator deployments. Additionally, operators and integrators who are dependent upon the technology benefit from the growing breadth and depth of available solutions.
We’re designing this new strategy so the full industry derives value from it. ONF members of all types can bring their unique innovation and value into the solution. Everyone involved in the networking ecosystem stands to receive value from the Open Innovation Pipeline.
What value do vendors receive?
Close coordination with network operators to achieve greater ROI.
We have a fantastic base of operator partners that are fully invested in what we are doing with dollars, people, and energy, and through the ONF we help connect the pieces. Vendors get to collaborate directly and align with operators on use cases and deployment planning.
This benefit is extended to system integrators as well.
Accelerated innovation into operator networks by leveraging the Open Innovation Pipeline
Making it easy to add your unique value to solutions, thereby accelerating time to revenue.
What value do operators receive?
Help with turning service provider networks into platforms for service delivery:
Open “the programmable network” to the global developer community.
Make it simple to program “apps” for emerging 5G, IOT, VR/AR opportunities.
Data center economics and cloud agility through integration of open networking technologies, merchant silicon and commodity white boxes for rapid creation of new edge services.
A more strategic network, especially at “the network edge.”
Streamlined network operations through DevOps models, that enables incorporation of whitebox CAPEX efficiencies and drives substantial OPEX optimization through the use of cloud-native optimizations.
What value do integrators receive?
With disaggregation and open source options comes the need for trusted partners to provide integration and support for operators consuming these new solutions.
There’s a lot of pent up demand and a big skill gap trying to understand these new technologies and new ways of working, which has created a unique market opportunity.
Integrators can differentiate themselves with expertise in helping operators enter this new era.
Is the Open Innovation Pipeline only focused on service providers?
Current pipelines are focused on a number of operator focused use cases, including:
Ultra Broadband Residential Services (R-CORD)
5G Mobile (M-CORD)
Enterprise VPN Services (E-CORD)
Packet Optical Backbones (ONOS)
The ONF is currently investigating a number of Enterprise use cases. We are working with members on identifying specific solutions, and plan to apply the Open Innovation Pipeline to solutions in this space. We hope to announce some activities over the next few months, and we are interested in having internal discussions with any members who would like more details at this time.
Interested in learning more about the Open Innovation Pipeline and membership?
You can find more details about the Open Innovation Pipeline in the full announcement, on our FAQ page and in my last blog post on network disaggregation. If you’re interested in learning more about ONF membership, check out our membership page. We currently have a member community of 200+ vendors, operators and integrators, positioning ONF for success to transform networks into agile platforms for service delivery.
Inaugural ONF Bootcamp
Another way to learn more about the ONF Open Innovation Pipeline and how to navigate and benefit from the SDN, NFV and Cloud technologies that are transforming the open networking industry is to register for the first-ever ONF Bootcamp hosted on May 23. This event is free for ONF members, ON.Lab Partners and academia. We are also running an early bird special with a $300 discount through May 12. Click here for more details and the registration link.
Timon Sloane, VP of Standards and Membership
