Networking giant – Juniper Networks, announced its intent to move the codebase for OpenContrail, its open-source network virtualization cloud platform, to The Linux Foundation, at NXTWORK 2017.
OpenTrail is a scalable network-virtualization control plane that provides powerful SDN (software-defined networking) and security. It is deployed by leading cloud providers, telcos, enterprise datacenters etc. to simplify their operations and for the automation of workloads across clouds.
Juniper bought Contrail, which was an SDN company, in 2012. Contrail products were first released as open sourced in 2013. Since then, the networking giant has put in all the efforts to build a more reliable, flexible and vibrant environment around the project. This includes expanding project’s governance earlier this year.
“Over the past year, we have been working closely with the community to transition the governance for OpenContrail’s codebase because we believe it has the unique opportunity to be a ubiquitous cloud-grade network fabric used everywhere. We look forward to continuing our close participation with the community once this project takes on new life under the Linux Foundation.” – Randy Bias, vice president of technology – cloud software at Juniper Networks.
Juniper has always strongly advocated the importance of open standards and open source, carrying out a variety of work to support this cause. Moving OpenContrail’s codebase to Linux foundation will fulfill Juniper’s mission to ensure that the project remains community-led.
Linux Foundation has always been the home for many open-source networking projects which include SDN OpenDaylight, OPNFV (Open Platform for Network Function Virtualization), ONAP (Open Network Automation Program) and many others.
Arpit Joshipura, vice president of networking and orchestration at the Linux Foundation, talking about the move, said, “We are excited at the prospect of our growing global community being able to broadly adopt, manage and integrate OpenContrail’s codebase to manage and secure diverse cloud environments. Having this addition to our open-source projects will be instrumental in achieving the level of technology advancements our community has become known for.”
While Juniper has stood to its commitment to open-source community with its announcement to opensource OpenContrail’s Codebase, it is also extensively towards securing and automating processes for better networks. Taking an important step in this direction, Juniper also announced advancements to its cybersecurity platform. These advancements when combined with highly scalable, automated and real-time intelligent features of its SDSN (Software-Defined Secure Networks) will help organizations safeguard themselves against any potential threats.
“At Juniper, we feel that automation is a key to better protect enterprise networks. The traditional manual processes are labor intensive and inefficient, leading to wasted time and resources. Juniper’s new SDSN cybersecurity platform enhancements will allow already stretched security teams to save money and time to remediation, leveraging the benefits of automation while still relying on the extensive expertise of security professionals,” said, Mihir Maniar, vice president of security product management, Juniper Networks.
