SnapRoute and Dell EMC to Help Advance Linux Foundation’s OpenSwitch Project

OpenSwitch Project Focused on Creation of Full-Featured Network Operating System, Accelerated by New Members and Contributions

SAN FRANCISCO – October 31, 2016 – The OpenSwitch project today announced that SnapRoute, Inc. and Dell EMC will deepen their contributions to the project to advance OpenSwitch as it continues to evolve and meet market requests for a complete open source network operating system (NOS).

Today’s enhanced contributions include:

• SnapRoute’s open source network stack and management services, which enable a fully modular, hardware independent NOS, accessible through a complete set of APIs.
• Dell EMC’s OS10 Open Edition, which represents a fully open, fully disaggregated base subsystem incorporating hardware and platform abstraction layers for networking switching applications.

These contributions will function together to ensure organizations and the open source community have a complete open networking stack.

Other OpenSwitch project supporting members and participating organizations include Barefoot Networks, Broadcom, Cavium, Inc., Centec Networks, Edgecore Networks, Extreme Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, LinkedIn, Marvell, Mellanox Technologies, Nephos Inc., P4.org, Quattro Networks and Terralogic.

The OpenSwitch architecture, based on SnapRoute’s networking stack contribution, adopts a modular protocol and software approach, allowing organizations to use only what is necessary, also enabling legacy architectures to continue to function. These additional contributions will further accelerate the OpenSwitch project and enable organizations to fully realize the value of an open source network operating system.

“The OpenSwitch community continues to demonstrate its enthusiastic commitment to the creation of an open source network operating system,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “It’s exciting to see a rapid influx of contributions to OpenSwitch, which are priming the project to support next-generation requirements and features.”

“Dell EMC is committed to leading within the open switching community to drive networking innovation and disrupt this historically proprietary industry,” said Gavin Cato, senior vice president, Networking Development Engineering, Dell EMC.” By contributing Dell EMC OS10 Open Edition to the OpenSwitch community, in addition to our previous contributions within OCP, we’re further unlocking the networking software stack with the power of open platform abstraction and disaggregation.”

“SnapRoute is fully committed to driving the project and enabling a future of open networking,” said Jason Forrester, founder and CEO, SnapRoute, Inc. “By taking a leadership role in delivering SnapRoute’s open source networking stack to the project, we are taking a meaningful step toward realizing the vision of a fully open network operating system.”

Supporting Comments

“Barefoot Networks is delighted to continue to contribute to the growth of the OpenSwitch project,” said Martin Izzard, CEO and co-founder of Barefoot Networks. “OpenSwitch’s commitment to providing an open source control plane, along with our commitment to an open source programmable data plane with our Ethernet switch, gives the networking industry a fully open, programmable and highest performance networking solution.”

“As a founding member of the Linux Foundation OpenSwitch project, Broadcom is pleased to see the growth in collaboration and interest with SnapRoute and Dell EMC joining the project,” said Eli Karpilovski, director of SDN ecosystem and software marketing at Broadcom Limited. “Broadcom will continue to enhance the OpenSwitch project through further development of BroadView and OpenNSL software to ensure greater performance and features for numerous networking solutions.”

“As a Premier member of the Linux Foundation OpenSwitch project, we are excited to see Dell EMC and SnapRoute commit to making these substantial code contributions,” said Albert Fishman, Linux Foundation OpenSwitch project marketing chair and senior technical marketing manager of Cavium Switching Platform Group, Cavium, Inc., “OpenSwitch is now one step closer to providing the data center community with an open source network operating system that enables organizations to focus on developing innovative networking solutions, which can exploit Cavium’s extensible switch architecture to address rapidly changing market needs.”

“Extreme Networks is fully committed to the innovative OpenSwitch project and we look forward to working with the broader community of partners to extend our portfolio of solutions to customers worldwide,” said Eric Broockman, CTO and EVP, Engineering, Extreme Networks. “The OpenSwitch project aligns well with our ExtremeSwitching product line, and complements our goals of delivering flexible, secure and efficient switching platforms to enterprises around the globe. We see this as a competitive advantage as the technology industry evolves at an increasingly rapid pace.”

“As a founding member of the OpenSwitch initiative, HPE is pleased to see ongoing industry momentum and valued contributions from across the industry to support the Open Networking agenda,” said Dom Wilde, general manager and vice president, Data Center Networking, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

“We are excited to see additional vendors contributing to the development of OpenSwitch,” said Zaid Ali, senior director of infrastructure engineering at LinkedIn. “We look forward to working with them and the rest of the community on continued development of the OpenSwitch network operating system.”

“To accelerate the realization of open, disaggregated networking, we are excited to see increased contributions from a growing number of companies,” said Trevor Caulder, senior staff technologist, Mellanox Technologies. “We fully embrace the open network operating system model and look forward to the time-to-market and Capex and Opex savings advantage OpenSwitch promises to deliver.”

“P4.org is delighted to see the increased participation in the OpenSwitch project,” said Nick McKeown, board member at P4 Language Consortium (P4.org). “We’re excited that OpenSwitch continues to leverage an open and user programmable data plane p4 program and simulation model for development and testing of new features. This will lead to interoperable and reliable OpenSwitch systems, and should accelerate the development of new data plane features.”

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.

About the OpenSwitch Project

The OpenSwitch project brings together an ecosystem of contributors focused on a full-featured network operating system and control plane built to run on Linux enabling the transition to disaggregated networks. OpenSwitch is a Linux Foundation project. For additional information, visit http://openswitch.net/.