The ONF adapts after sale of spin-off Ananki to Intel

Intel’s acquisition of Ananki, a private 5G networking company set up within the ONF last year, has meant the open-model organisation has lost the bulk of its engineering staff.

Timon Sloane

The ONF, a decade-old non-profit consortium led by the telecom operators, has developed some notable networking projects over the years such as CORD, OpenFlow, one of the first software-defined networking (SDN) standards, and Aether, the 5G edge platform.

Its joint work with the operators has led to virtualised and SDN building blocks that, when combined, can address comprehensive networking tasks such as 5G, wireline broadband and private wireless networks.

The ONF’s approach has differed from other open-source organisations. Its members pay for an in-house engineering team to co-develop networking blocks based on disaggregation, SDN and cloud.

The ONF and its members have built a comprehensive portfolio of networking functions which last year led to the organisation spinning out a start-up, Ananki, to commercialise a complete private end-to-end wireless network.

Now Intel has acquired Ananki, taking with it 44 of the ONF’s 55 staff.

“Intel acquired Ananki, Intel did not acquire the ONF,” says Timon Sloane, the ONF’s newly appointed general manager. “The ONF is still whole.”

The ONF will now continue with a model akin to other open-source organisations.

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BT’s Open RAN trial: A mix of excitement and pragmatism

“We in telecoms, we don’t do complexity very well.” So says Neil McRae, BT’s managing director and chief architect.

He was talking about the trend of making network architectures open and in particular the Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN), an approach that BT is trialling.

“In networking, we are naturally sceptical because these networks are very important and every day become more important,” says McRae

Whether it is Open RAN or any other technology, it is key for BT to understand its aims and how it helps. “And most importantly, what it means for customers,” says McRae. “I would argue we don’t do enough of that in our industry.”

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Can a think tank tackle telecoms innovation deficit?

The Telecom Ecosystem Group (TEG) will publish shortly its final paper that concludes two years of industry discussion on ways to spur innovation in telecommunications.

The paper, entitled Addressing the Telecom Innovation Deficit, says telcos have lost much of their influence in shaping the technologies on which they depend.

Source: Telecom Ecosystem Group

“They have become ageing monocultures; disruptive innovators have left the industry and innovation is outsourced,” says the report.

The TEG has held three colloquiums and numerous discussion groups soliciting views from experienced individuals across the industry during the two years.

The latest paper names eight authors but many more contributed to the document and its recommendations.

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Ciena builds its IP edge

Part II: IP Routing: Ciena's Vyatta acquisition 

Ciena’s acquisition of AT&T’s Vyatta team is a further step in its campaign to bolster its internet protocol (IP) expertise.

Ciena will gain 60 IP engineers with expertise in network operating systems (NOS).

“If you believe that IP-optical convergence is a trend, and Ciena does, then you need expertise in both areas,” says Joe Marsella, vice president, product line management, routing and switching at Ciena.

Joe Marsella

Ciena has been growing its IP expertise for the last five years. “We are competing against companies that have been doing this for 30 years,” says Marsella. “The more experience we can bring in, the more it helps us.”

Ciena says the deal emerged gradually. ”I can’t say it was a Ciena or an AT&T idea; it was a mutual discussion over time that finally resulted in an acquisition,” says Marsella.

Ciena will also gain its first R&D centre in Europe. The deal is expected to be completed before the year-end.

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Making optical networking feel like cycling downhill

BT’s chief architect, Neil McRae, is a fervent believer in the internet, a technology built on the continual progress of optical networking. He discussed both topics during his invited talk at the recent OFC 2021 virtual conference and exhibition.

Neil McRae’s advocacy of the internet as an educational tool for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds stems from his childhood experiences.

Neil McRae

“When I was a kid, I lived in a deprived area and the only thing that I could do was go to the library,” says McRae, chief architect and managing director for architecture and technology strategy at BT.

His first thought on discovering the internet was just how much there was to read.

“If I’m honest, everything I’ve learnt in technology has been pretty much self-taught,” says McRae.

This is why he so values the internet. It has given him a career where he has travelled widely and worked with talented and creative people.

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The Blue Planet platform's ongoing automation journey

Vodafone UK is one operator that has recently chosen Ciena's Blue Planet for the management of its optical and IP networks. An interview with Ciena to understand what the Blue Planet network automation tool does.

Having some knowledge of a telco's operations helps in understanding the role of a network automation platform. So says Kevin Wade, senior director and product marketing team leader at Ciena Blue Planet.

Source: Ciena

Service providers, like any business, have an operational infrastructure that begins with business processes. For a service provider, the process starts with a connectivity service request. The business processes capture the customer's order and deliver the requested service.

Once up and running, the service must be monitored and managed to ensure the service level agreement is upheld.

"Today, these processes are highly manual," says Wade. "Automation is being looked at and deployed more extensively to simplify these processes."

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Access 4.0: A valuable lesson in network transformation

The Access 4.0 broadband deployment by Deutsche Telekom has deepened its understanding of the intricacies of network transformation. The Access 4.0 team discusses what it has learnt and reflects on the issues a mass deployment raises.

Deutsche Telekom’s Access 4.0 platform has been delivering broadband services for nearly half a year.

But the operator has deliberately limited the deployment of the next-generation fibre-to-the-x platform to one central office in Stuttgart.

Robert SoukupThe system is fully functional, says Robert Soukup, senior program manager at Deutsche Telekom, but the operator wants to understand the processes involved so they can be automated before it starts the widescale deployment.

“Now we can see where the gaps are and what we need to adapt internally,” says Hans-Jörg Kolbe, chief engineer and head of SuperSquad Access 4.0 at Deutsche Telekom.

This will take the rest of the year. Only if this final check is successful will the Access 4.0 platform be rolled out across the operator’s 1,000 central offices in Germany.

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