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Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab) and the Linux Foundation announced today that CORD is now officially a new, independent open source project, and that three new vendors, including Google, have joined CORD.
Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center (CORD) got its start as a use case for ONOS , and while they both share many of the same partners, the time was ripe for CORD to become its own open source project, according to Guru Parulkar, executive director at ON.Lab .
"As we set this as an independent project, CORD can now have its own project board and governance," Parulkar said. "This is in very close collaboration with the Linux Foundation so we're going to do the best open source practices from Linux."
By leveraging the economies of data centers and the agility of cloud providers, CORD was designed to reinvent service providers' central offices for residential, mobile and enterprise customers. CORD uses new technologies, such as SDN and NFV, merchant silicon, white boxes and open-source platforms including ONOS, OpenStack, Docker and XOS.
Parulkar said that currently one central office could have up to 300 different types of proprietary equipment. Central offices today aren't programmable, and they are also creating bottlenecks to new revenue-generating services, according to Parulkar. Central offices also generate high capex and opex for service providers.
Last week the ONOS Project and Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced a new leaf-spine design for CORD that will play a key role going forward. (See ONOS, ONF Debut Leaf-Spine Design for Central Offices.)
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), which also joined ONOS, will host the first CORD Summit this Friday at its Google Sunnyvale Tech Corner Campus in California.
"The meta message here is that CORD is really picking up momentum big time," Parulkar said. "Google joining as a partner is both a big validation as well as indication that we can expect important contributions to the CORD architecture."
Samsung Corp. and Radisys Corp. (Nasdaq: RSYS) also joined CORD as new partners. Samsung will focus on CORD use cases for its mobile customers while Radisys will be a system integrator.
Service provider partners for CORD include Verizon, SK Telecom, AT&T and China Unicom. AT&T and China Unicom are currently in field trials with CORD, and Parulkar said that additional service providers have expressed an interest.
CORD will do its first open source distribution this week ahead of the summit.
"This is an important milestone for CORD, Parulkar said. "It's about creating a distribution platform that helps operators."
— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation
