Ciena offers commercial version of ON.Lab's ONOS SDN software

Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) has offered what company sources describe as a "commercially hardened" version of ON.Lab's Open Networking Operating System (ONOS) for software-defined networking (SDN) applications. The release of Blue Planet ONOS, expected in the first quarter of next year about 30 days after ON.Lab releases the upcoming Falcon upgrade of the operating system, will retain the open source characteristics of ONOS, but be easier for operators to work with, the sources say.

ONOS has received significant attention among service providers and the systems houses that hope to supply them with technology for its open source foundation and carrier-grade capabilities (see, for example, "ON.Lab, backed by AT&T and NTT, offers open source SDN operating system" and "Internet2 deploys ONOS SDN operating system"). The platform aims to enable service creation and large-scale deployment across systems from a variety of vendors. The OS enables a scalable SDN control plane that includes northbound and southbound open APIs to support management, control, and service applications.

However, each version of ONOS (which are all named after birds, including the most recent Emu iteration) might contain bugs or might have to be customized or otherwise tweaked to meet an operator's requirements. With the Blue Planet ONOS subscription service, Ciena will perform these functions for the operator, say Joe Cumello, vice president of marketing for Ciena's Blue Planet Division, and Recep Ozdag, senior director, solutions marketing for the Blue Planet Division. Ciena will honor the collaborative, open source philosophy of ONOS by releasing any bug fixes it makes to the ONOS community, the sources say.

Operators also will automatically receive any benefits from future upgrades to ONOS as well, the sources add.

The first iteration of Blue Planet ONOS will be tailored for use in Central Office Re-Architected as a Data Center (CORD) projects (see, for example, "AT&T, ON.Lab to lead CORD proof-of-concept demonstration"). Other applications likely will be targeted in the future.

From a Ciena perspective, Blue Planet ONOS expands the Blue Planet portfolio to include data center requirements. However, this extension likely will only benefit Ciena among service provider customers; Web 2.0 and other large enterprise and private data center operators likely will use alternatives to ONOS, including in-house options, according to Cumello.

Since the agreement with ON.Lab that has led to Blue Planet ONOS isn't exclusive, it's likely other systems vendors will follow the same path as Ciena. The company will point to its experience with SDN support as well as the ease of integration with other elements of the Blue Planet SDN platform offering as differentiators, Cumello says.

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.