In March 2014, California-based Vello Systems launched the Open Source Optical (OSO) Forum. The forum’s stated aim was to encourage open-source optical solutions in data centre and enterprise networks. It was announced around the OFC event in San Francisco that month.
The idea was to give optical networking an “open optical” counterpart to the push in Ethernet towards merchant silicon and software-defined networking (SDN). In practice that meant software interoperability, based on OpenFlow, across optical products from several vendors, so that enterprises and data centre operators could avoid vendor lock-in.
Who joined, and who did not
The charter members, besides Vello, were Accelink, CoAdna, CrossFiber, O-Net and PacketLight. Pacnet joined from the customer and service-provider side. Vello said more members would be announced over the following weeks.
Telecom Asia pointed out that the forum began small, with none of the large optical vendors such as Ciena, Infinera, Cisco, Coriant or Alcatel-Lucent. It also noted that Vello was the only member of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), and that none of the members took part in the OpenDaylight project. SDxCentral reported that Vello’s marketing vice president, Jeff Paine, put the thin line-up down partly to the press-release deadline, which left some companies still weighing their involvement.
What the forum set out to do
The forum’s charter was to bring together optical component and system vendors, software companies, channel partners and end users. Its goal was to promote standards-based, interchangeable, power-efficient optical technologies in next-generation data centres and cloud environments. Light Reading reported that it would build on existing standards, namely OpenFlow from the ONF and standard DWDM technology, and would not write standards of its own.
The forum was to provide and maintain community-supported open-source software for merchant-optical systems from current and future members. The code was to be hosted on the consortium’s website, opensourceoptical.org.
Vello said the software would include the optical extensions in OpenFlow 1.4, which it had written and contributed to the ONF. On Vello’s account, optical systems running OSO software could be deployed and configured from a single screen alongside OpenFlow-based Ethernet switches. That would remove the need for separate, complex optical commissioning and management.
Two routes to market
Vello described two ways members could use the software. Some would port it onto optical systems they already sold, making those systems compatible with OpenFlow controllers and application frameworks. Others might build native OpenFlow 10G/40G/100G 1RU “pizza box” optical systems or other appliances. Vello said these could be used for data centre interconnection and for optimising network paths by application.
SDxCentral reported that Vello had built a reference platform on OSO, an optical pizza box aimed at enterprises. Paine said Vello had no plans to sell the box itself. The company had rebooted as a pure software business in 2009. The reference design drew on its earlier work as a packet-optical equipment vendor. Vello re-engineered items such as ROADM cards, integrating them into smaller, more power-frugal forms. ROADMs allow wavelengths on an optical network to be assigned flexibly.
Paine argued that open source had come to be seen in a favourable light economically, and that optical had no reason to stay out. He said it was easier to put 50 engineers on a joint industry effort than to keep 500 working in-house. Paine described configuring OSO-based gear as comparable to configuring a 48-port white-box Ethernet switch.
Support from the ONF
Dan Pitt, then executive director of the Open Networking Foundation, welcomed the move. He said applying OpenFlow-based SDN to optical components and networks opened up new options for connectivity within and between data centres, for price-performance, and for dynamic software control. He said the ONF looked forward to working with the OSO community on requirements and solutions.
Vello’s chief executive at the time was Karl May. The company described OSO as part of its aim to provide software for standards-based hardware.
SDxCentral’s headline for its coverage that month was that adding optical to OpenFlow would not be easy. It noted that the vendors in OSO were mostly small players. It also reported a theory, noted by Network World, that Vello had deliberately kept big optical vendors out, a strategy similar to the one followed by the CloudNFV open-source project.
CB Insights’ company profile of Vello later described the ratified OpenFlow 1.4 release as containing all the Vello-authored optical extensions that OpenFlow had previously lacked.