The Open Networking User Group (ONUG) Board of Directors today published the “Open Networking Challenges and Opportunities” white paper detailing user frustration with vendor lock-in and the slow pace of vendor changes, and outlining a user mandate and requirements for the top 3 use cases identified by a vote of IT business leaders at ONUG Spring 2014.

Furthermore, the Board announced that it is running use case working groups and has invited IT business leaders to participate in setting the direction and establishing user requirements for vendor development of SD-WAN, Virtual Networks/Overlays, and Network Services Virtualization. The groups are also open to a limited number of vendors demonstrating at ONUG Fall 2014 at Credit Suisse in New York. The working groups will result in published requirements that will serve as vendor development guidelines regarding investment directions and Proof of Concepts (POCs) for the user community. The ONUG Board members below are co-chairmen for the following use case working groups:

Software-Defined WAN

• Andrew Kulawiak, Bank of America
• Aryo Kresnadi, FedEx
• Pablo Espinosa, Gap, Inc.

Virtual Networks/Overlays

• Harmen Van der Linde, Citigroup
• Carlo Matos, Fidelity Investments

Network Services Virtualization

• James Younan, UBS
• Vesko Pehlivanov, Credit Suisse

“The ONUG Board white paper and working groups represent consensus of top IT leaders, who spend billions of dollars in annual IT investments, demanding that their requirements be included in vendor development to accelerate the deployment of open networking solutions,” said Nick Lippis, ONUG co-chairman and co-founder. “The slow pace of networking changes is no longer acceptable to the IT community. In 2015, we will see companies move from a trial or POC to production deployment, and the ONUG Board of Directors wants to ensure that the community’s collective requirements are addressed.”

ONUG expectations for open networking highlighted in the white paper include:

• In the short term, a lower operational cost model (OPEX) on the order of 15-30 percent relief; longer term, a new definition of network OPEX based on real vendor support cost, rather than a fixed percentage of capital cost
• Capital expense or CAPEX cost relief on the order of 25-75 percent
• A thriving software ecosystem which provides rapid innovation
• Vendor-independent network design flexibility (elimination of vendor lock-in)
• Faster IT delivery and efficient business process

Moreover, the white paper defines six architectural areas that will open the networking industry and deliver choice and design options, an open networking ecosystem, and a common multivendor approach:

1) Device discovery, provisioning, and asset registration for physical and virtual devices

2) Automated “no hands on keyboards” configuration and change management tools that align DevOps and NetOps

3) A common controller and control protocol for both physical and virtual devices

4) A baseline policy manager that communicates to the common controller for enforcement

5) A mechanism for sharing (communicating or consuming) network state and a unified network state database that collects, at a minimum, MAC and IP address forwarding tables automatically

6) Integrated monitoring of overlays and underlays

To join the ONUG community, download the ONUG white paper, and receive additional information on ONUG working groups or regional fireside chats, sign up here.