Ciena, though its Blue Planet division, plans to offer a fully-supported commercial version of the Open Networking Operating System (ONOS) open-source software. The release of Blue Planet ONOS will make it easier for operators wanting to work with ONOS. From Ciena’s perspective, it also extends the capabilities of the Blue Planet network orchestration software into the data centre domain.
ONOS, backed by ON.Lab and several leading service providers and vendors, is a complete open source, carrier-grade, network operating system built on software-defined networking (SDN) principles that enables agile service creation and deployment at scale on any hardware. This platform delivers a scalable SDN control plane featuring open APIs to support management, control, and service applications across mission-critical networks.
Ciena’s ‘commercially hardened’ version of ONOS will allow service providers to take advantage of the cumulative software expertise of the open source community combined with the level of assurance and support that users require for commercial deployment. Blue Planet ONOS is backed by Ciena’s world-class software, service and support teams. In keeping with the open-source ethos, any enhancements that Ciena makes to ONOS for customer engagements will be fed back into the open source community.
“Ciena has been working with ON.Lab and its service provider members since its inception, so it is a natural next step to bring ONOS and Blue Planet together,” said Francois Locoh-Donou, senior vice president and chief operating officer, Ciena. “We believe that having a commercially hardened version of ONOS that is fully backed by Ciena software, service and support personnel will instill confidence in our customers that they have the right combination to adopt network virtualisation technologies with greater ease.”
The Blue Planet ONOS is initially focused on the Central Office Re-Architected as a Data Centre (CORD) project. CORD provides the framework for service providers to re-architect their traditional central offices into next-generation data centres. This will allow service providers to use SDN and virtualisation technologies to achieve much greater network and service programmability. The ultimate goal is to provide end customers with next-generation, on-demand services and content that leverage a lower cost web-scale infrastructure.
Ciena’s Blue Planet ONOS, which will align with the Falcon release of ONOS, is projected to be available in the first calendar quarter of 2016.
First released in December 2014, ONOS is catching the attention of the service provider community as it develops rapidly. Guru Parulkar, co-founder and executive director ON.Lab and chairman of the ONOS board, said: “We are excited that Ciena, a recognised leader and advocate for open, programmable networks, will bring this vision to market with Blue Planet ONOS and really appreciate its commitment to contributing bug fixes and enhancements back to open source. In one short year, we have gone from inception to commercial maturity – this is a validation of the power of open source innovation.”