Let’s pick the current move to high-performance and high-scale, cloud-native networking as an example.
Kubernetes/
Istio makes container workloads easy to manage, operate and network. The universal high-performance data plane provided by
FD.io/VPP makes inter-container communications very fast and scalable. The logical conclusion and next step is to integrate Kubernetes/Istio and FD.io/VPP. The
Contiv-VPP project provides for this integration. Evolving your stack to enable cloud-native networking functions will naturally lead you to project
Ligato.
PNDA and
SNAS could complement your stack with analytics capabilities.
All of this gives you an amazing cloud-native solution stack on which you can build your own, differentiated cloud-native services and network functions.
The aspects of rapid innovation fueled by CI/CD-driven development methodologies, along with defining architecture by the means of code, is now recognized as best practice throughout the networking industry. Development teams adopt open source tool chains and business processes. Industry leaders adopt system level architectures defined in open source. They flexibly combine open-source and commercial components to create customized, yet industry standards-driven solutions. The open source networking stack is now the standard common base (much like Linux is the base for any OS running on network devices). Commercial additions are the elements that differentiate vendors’ solutions. The open source engagement model, where everyone is free to participate, has proven to drive rapid innovation while ensuring a high level of security. There are just far more eyes on the code than in any proprietary setup – as long as you’ve chosen a solution from an active and vibrant community. By being active in a vibrant community, every line of code you commit, every wiki page you change, and every ticket you create adds an entry to your virtual CV. Transparency rules.
India Digital Open Summit – Open Source Transformational Forces at Work