CENGN Joins the Linux Foundation as an Associate Member


Following OPNFV’s recent joining of the Linux Foundation Networking Fund (LFN), CENGN was asked to come on board the Linux Foundation platform, and we are excited to announce our new status as associate member of the Linux Foundation.

OPNFV Summit 2016
CENGN’s Dave Urschatz and Kontron’s Alex

The Linux Foundation is the world’s largest not-for profit organization dedicated to reinforcing the development and commercialization of new, open source technologies. By creating a sustainable ecosystem around open source projects, the Linux Foundation aims to promote, protect, and advance the Linux operating system and collaborative development in the open source sector. With the support of major multinationals like CENGN’s members Bell, Cisco, Huawei, Nokia, Ribbon Communications, and Wind River, the LF offers itself as a major resource and benefactor of open source technologies, bringing together projects large and small onto one platform. Through this platform, projects can share their technology and support an ecosystem that provides financial and intellectual resources, training, infrastructure, services, and events all with the goal of accelerating the open source technology industry. With the creation of the LFN, the Linux foundation plans to put more emphasis on nurturing member engagement and project sharing.

To be more specific, the LFN is an entity put forth by the Linux foundation to encourage cross collaboration between Linux Foundation projects, pulling in support from six of the largest open source networking projects in the industry, including FD.io, OpenDaylight, ONAP, OPNFV, PNDA, and SNAS. The LFN seeks to create a cohesive administrative structure from its projects, making communication between associated projects easier while still maintaining project independence. By bringing projects under a common platform, the LFN will streamline the process of creating VNFs and lab testing. Additionally, the LFN will allow new members to join through a single membership, connecting them to all LFN projects simultaneously rather than having to join each one separately. This will result in easier cross-collaboration throughout the platform, encouraging the uptake of more collaboration projects and fast-tracking innovation across the network.

CloudOps’ Carlos Rivera presenting at out last meetup
CENGN Marketing Manager, Rick Penwarden (left), and Senior Technical Lead, Dave Urschatz, arrive in Beijing for the OPNFV Summit

As an associate member of the Linux Foundation, we will be able to more closely collaborate on future open source initiatives, helping fulfill their open source innovation goals, as well as CENGN’s mission to strengthen Canada’s leadership in next generation technologies. CENGN has already worked alongside the Linux Foundation in the past; attending both last year’s Open Source Summit and OPNFV Summit, both events hosted by the Linux Foundation ecosystem that attracted thousands of tech professionals from around the globe to share ideas and learn about cutting edge open source technologies. While there, we hosted our own booth to spread the word on our mission, meet like minded tech professionals, and give information on our infrastructure and services. Most recently, CENGN visited Los Angeles to take part in the Open Networking Summit, a major Linux foundation event looking to shed light on the future of open source networking.

Aside from events, we leverage open source in our OpenStack based cloud architecture, and support different open source technologies through various projects with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We also host our quarterly, where any tech enthusiast can enjoy demos and how-to’s on the latest open source technologies; and more recently, we worked with growing Canadian business, CloudOps, to deliver a training session on open source technologies like Docker and Kubernetes.

The Linux Foundation’s push to foster innovation and cross collaboration is an initiative that CENGN identifies well with. We have our own mission to support the Canadian networking industry, and from that support, root Canada’s place at the forefront of next generation innovation. The opportunity of being an associate member of LFN will serve to bolster our efforts in accelerating the Canadian ICT industry, and we look forward to future collaborations between CENGN and the Linux Foundation.

For more information on the Harmonization of Linux Associations under LFN, view the press release here.

To check out our last Open Source Networking Meetup click here!

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About the Author

CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, drives technology innovation and industry growth through our testbed, technical expertise, talent development, and partner ecosystem. Through our projects, CENGN enables small and medium Canadian Enterprises to test and validate promising technologies, removing barriers to product commercialization and accelerating market growth.

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