2015 SDN and OpenFlow World Congress

In a few weeks I will be heading to Dusseldorf Germany to work at the 2015 SDN and OpenFlow World Congress.  While the title doesn’t suggest it, this event has become one of the hottest, “must attend” shows in Europe for operators and TEMs involved in NFV.

My first attendance at this show as was in 2013, and it came at a time when ETSI NFV was just getting ready to celebrate its first birthday.  The publication of the seminal whitepaper announcing the ‘birth’ NFV to the world  was only 12 months old, and yet there was a palpable excitement surrounding NFV in the air.  Many hardware and software suppliers on board, throwing their hats into the NFV ring, taking about the products they’d planned and features they’d have.

Jump forward to 2014 and the “palpable excitement” had turned into a loud ROAR!  Just to get onto the main show floor, attendees had to run the gauntlet of a series of ETSI Sponsored Proofs of Concept booths, showcasing products and solution concepts that had followed the official ETSI PoC process.  I was one of the lucky people to be working a booth the “ETSI PoC Zone”, demonstrating aspects of High Reliability and Availability using Wind River’s Titanium Server NFV Software Platform.  This provided me with some great one-on-one time with show attendees, and proved to be an excellent forum in which to communicate what separated Wind River from our competitors in this nascent market (e.g. our 6x9s Reliability, or our High Performance Accelerated Virtual Switch).

Again, what a difference a year makes!  Now in 2015, we’re no longer focused on Proofs of Concept, having actual product and traffic running on our solution in the field.  As we continue to grow and expand our footprint, we’re adding new features, introducing innovative product variants, and integrating with more and more 3^rd party VNF partners & h/w through our Titanium Cloud Carrier Grade Partnership program.

If you’re attending the show yourself and would like to learn more about what it takes to succeed in NFV, come listen to Charlie Ashton’s talk “Open for NFV business: what are the real requirements?” held opening day – Oct. 13th – at 16:25.

I expect this year’s show will be the best one yet and I can’t wait to see what the next 12 months has in store!