Linux Foundation Expands Event Portfolio with Open Networking Summit

Linux Foundation to host the open source networking event of the year with industry’s premier SDN & NFV conference

SAN FRANCISCO, November 23, 2015 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today is announcing the Open Networking Summit (ONS) is becoming a Linux Foundation event. Linux Foundation events are where the world’s leading technologists meet, collaborate and innovate. ONS 2016 will take place March 14-17, 2016 in Santa Clara, Calif.

By joining The Linux Foundation’s portfolio of events, ONS will extend its reach to the broader open source community and include Linux Foundation projects such as ONOS, OpenDaylight and OPNFV, among others. ONS will host collaboration among these projects, as well as efforts such as IOVisor, OpenDataPlane, OpenSwitch, and P4, among others to advance the state of the art for Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

“The networking industry is in the early stages of a major transformation that relies on open source and collaboration,” said Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. “Through its open source networking projects, The Linux Foundation has been helping to lead the evolution of this industry, and we are excited to combine our expertise with ONS’ to continue the growth of open source in this space for the benefit of service providers, cloud providers and enterprises.”

Created by the founders of SDN, ONS is designed to foster collaboration that addresses the opportunities, challenges and key developments in the quickly evolving world of SDN, OpenFlow, and NFV. For the past five years, ONS – the industry’s premier event – has united the networking industry ecosystem of developers, end users, both disruptive and incumbent vendors, open source project maintainers, leading researchers, business executives and investors to discuss breaking SDN and NFV developments for immediate impact to shape the future of the networking industry.

“Open source SDN and NFV are the future of networking and future of our industry. Transitioning ONS to The Linux Foundation allows ONS to build on its successes as the premier event shaping the future of SDN and NFV to help grow the community and accelerate adoption of open source SDN and NFV by network operators and vendors,” said ONS Chair Guru Parulkar. “The ONS team looks forward to working with The Linux Foundation team to make 2016 a resounding success.”

ONS has become a recognized forum for major industry announcements and the introduction of open source networking projects. AT&T, Google and The Linux Foundation, among others have announced major networking projects and initiatives at ONS over just the last few years. ONS also pioneered the SDN Solutions Showcase, which includes live demonstrations and use cases from vendors, partners and customers.

ONS 2016 will bring together the global SDN / NFV ecosystem and open source community to showcase solutions that are transforming networking for service providers, data centers and enterprises and to help developers and architects keep up with the SDN/NFV tools and technologies ready for evaluation and deployment. The focus of the 2016 event will be on enabling the understanding of the open networking landscape and how it advances SDN and NFV through pragmatic use-cases, making ONS the ideal forum for companies to share their thought leadership positions and production innovations in the area of open source networking.

More information on ONS 2016, including the call for proposals, will be announced in the coming weeks. Visit http://opennetsummit.org/conference/ for more details.

In addition to ONS, the Linux Foundation hosts a variety of events that bring together the world’s leading technologists. This includes networking events OpenDaylight Summit and OPNFV Summit, as well as dozens of open source events worldwide. Learn more at http://events.linuxfoundation.org.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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