Global Enterprises Join The Linux Foundation to Accelerate Open Source Development Across Diverse Industries

Open source is now mainstream. More and more developers, organizations, and enterprises are are understanding the benefits of an open source strategy and getting involved. In fact, The Linux Foundation is on track to reach 1,000 participating organizations in 2017 and aims to bring even more voices into open source technology projects ranging from embedded and automotive to blockchain and cloud.

Just this week, AT&T joined The Linux Foundation as a Platinum Member, and 16 other organizations joined as Silver Members. Together, these organizations combine to help support development of the greatest shared technology resources in history, while accelerating innovation across industry verticals.

AT&T’s commitment to open source follows news of the company’s contribution of several million lines of ECOMP code to The Linux Foundation. Additionally, Chris Rice, senior vice president of AT&T Labs, joined The Linux Foundation Board of Directors and was also recently selected as the ONAP chairman.

The Linux Foundation is excited about the recent merger of open source ECOMP and OPEN-O, which formed the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) project initiated by China Mobile. The newly formed ONAP will allow end users to automate, design, orchestrate, and manage services and virtual functions. Through this amalgamation of projects, ONAP creates a harmonized framework for real-time, policy-driven software automation of virtual network functions and is poised to deliver a unified architecture and implementation faster than any one project could on its own.

AT&T, along with other members, service providers, developers, and industry leaders, will be at Open Networking Summit next week, April 3-6, in Santa Clara, CA to discuss networking topics, share insights, and shape the future of the industry. The event will feature an enterprise track, more than 75 sessions, and keynotes from networking visionaries.

The new Silver members include: Amihan Global Strategies, BayLibre, Bell Canada, China Merchants Bank, Comcast, Ericsson, Innovium, Kinvolk, Kontena, Kubique, Metaswitch Networks, Monax, Pinterest, SAP SE, SELTECH, and Tech Mahindra.

In addition to joining the Foundation, many of these new members have joined Linux Foundation projects across a wide range of technologies, such as Automotive Grade Linux, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Hyperledger, Open Container Initiative, Open Mainframe Project, Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), OpenSwitch, and Yocto Project.

The Linux Foundation is also excited about a new initiative in the IoT space. If you’re working in the edge networking/IoT space and want to learn more, please contact Mike Woster.