ONF expands Asia-Pacific region membership.
I’m currently in Asia for a series of speaking engagements on SDN migration strategies, and I couldn’t be happier to announce the growth of our APAC membership from China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. ONF now boasts 26 APAC member companies, seven of which have joined since July of this year.
We’ve embraced new member companies from a variety of industries, including cloud computing, e-commerce, telecommunications, and networking products. The growth in APAC follows our recent announcement of member company Beijing Internet Institute (BII) as the first international certified testing lab in Asia, and we hope to continue to build on the momentum we’ve seen in the region.
In the second half of the year, ONF welcomed Alibaba Group, a company that has developed leading businesses in consumer e-commerce, online payment, business-to-business marketplaces, and cloud computing, at a scale that’s hard to comprehend. Also new to our membership is Fiberhome Technologies, an IT product and solutions provider with special expertise in fiber-optic communications. In addition, ONF forged a strategic collaboration with the China SDN Commission (ChinaSDN), a consortium of academia, industry, and government dedicated to the development of SDN technologies, to increase deployment and commercialization of SDN and the OpenFlow® protocol in the country. In fact I met with them today, and they are up to 60 members, including 24 from the services sector.
Continuing membership momentum in Asia, ONF welcomed two companies from India: Tata Communications, a leading provider of new world communications; and Wipro Limited, a global information technology, consulting, and outsourcing company. ONF also greeted three Taiwan-based companies: EstiNet, a developer of SDN products and solutions; Institute for Information Industry (III), a technology center of excellence, jointly sponsored by the Taiwanese government and prominent private enterprises for the purpose of strengthening the developments of the information industry in Taiwan; and MediaTek, a fabless semiconductor company for wireless communications and digital multimedia solutions.
With the momentum within the region, we have appointed Daisuke Saso as the director of ONF in Japan, who will assist in activities within the region. We are excited to welcome him on board as he shares the belief that open SDN is becoming increasingly important in Asia for both vendors and end-user organizations, and will help ONF to increase participation in industry events.
While in Asia, I will have a number of private meetings and am also participating in various speaking and networking events discussing both ONF’s achievements to date and general advancements in open SDN. The following are events ONF representatives will be speaking at in December:
- International Mobile Internet Conference (Beijing) - Dec.3-4, 2013
I spoke yesterday at this event, which is sponsored by China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom. There was, for the first time, a track just on SDN.
- SDN & NFV Asia 2013 (Singapore) – Dec. 3-5, 2013
James Sun, president and CEO of Centec Networks, will provide a full update on OpenFlow® development on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 9:10 a.m. SGT.
- International SDN Symposium Taiwan (Taipei) - Dec. 9, 2013
James Liao, CEO and co-founder of Pica8, and I will speak on multiple panels, addressing topics such as SDN global trends and how to migrate to SDN.
- Open & Virtual Networking Conference 2013 (Seoul) - Dec. 11, 2013
The event, presented by OpenFlow® Korea and ONF, will mark ONF’s first co-hosted event on the Korean peninsula.
- SDN Japan at Okinawa Open Days (Okinawa) - Dec. 12-13, 2013
I will attend both OpenStack Japan and SDN Japan and will speak at the latter during the two events in the open cloud and emerging technology field. I will participate in discussions on topics that include the expectations of SDN and will visit the new Okinawa Open Laboratory.
In addition, Saso-san has organized our first Member Workday Update, to be held in Tokyo next Friday December 6. He and a number of our Japanese members who attended the most recent Member Workdays will present a two-hour report for all those who were unable to attend. A big crowd has signed up, and all I have to do is say hello and sit down.
As companies from around the world join ONF, the impact and scope of the SDN movement grow together with our organization. This increasing enthusiasm of SDN in the APAC region is encouraging for our continued growth, and good news for users. We look forward to maintaining SDN’s momentum within the APAC region and beyond.
- Dan Pitt, Executive Director, Open Networking Foundation
