DENT

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Edgecore Networks Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Accton Technology Corporation, the leading network ODM.  Edgecore Networks delivers wired and wireless networking products and solutions through channel partners and system integrators worldwide for the Data Center, Service Provider, Enterprise and SMB customers.  Edgecore Networks is the leader in open networking providing a full line of open WiFi access points, packet transponders, virtual PON OLTs, cell site gateways, and 1G, 10G, 25G, 40G, 100G and 400G OCP Accepted™ switches that offer choice of commercial and open source NOS and SDN software. For more information, visit www.edge-core.com

Why is your organization adopting an open-source approach?

Edgecore Networks has long been a believer in enabling our customers with three key factors – Freedom, Innovation & Control.  Open-Source is a facilitator to enabling customers with these factors.   Open-source provides our customers with freedom of choice across NOS offerings.  It is unarguably a place where Innovation thrives, and it provides them with control – control over their specific solutions – using the features, technologies and solutions that are right for their environment – not what is in a reference architecture of a network equipment manufacturer that is selling to a very diverse audience.

Why did you join DENT and what sort of impact do you think DENT has on the edge, networking, and IoT industries?

Edgecore has been a part of the emergence of Open solutions in other segments such as the Data Center & Service provider markets – and we believe that the time is right for the Enterprise Edge to also benefit from what an open, community driven solution such as DENT can provide.

As DENT is designed from the ground up to be as lightweight as possible, it is well suited to address cost-sensitive product at the edge of the network.  Also, by leveraging a common NOS in the edge networking, and certain edge end-points, there becomes the ability to leverage this commonality in simplicity of device management for the Enterprise IT managers that must deal with many disparate devices spread across many locations where they do not have skilled IT resources on-site.

What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the DENT community?

Certainly, a key benefit is being a part of a diverse community that has a common goal of defining a next-generation solution for the distributed enterprise.  This community that is comprised of end-users, semiconductor vendors, device manufacturers, third party applications & solutions vendors – all bring different perspectives to the table – that when merged result in better ideas – better outcomes – better solutions to offer to the market.

What sort of contributions has your team made to the community, ecosystem through DENT participation?

While Edgecore is known to many as an open-networking hardware equipment manufacturer – and while we are providing several of the initial key platforms on which the DENT NOS is running, we are also contributing through our expertise on the software, testing & solutions side.   Our team is providing software driver support for a variety of the subsystems in the solution, but we are also taking a very active role in the Test & Validation workgroup, contributing test automation solutions, methodologies, as well as infrastructure solutions to enable effective community development and testing. We are also working closely with other members to help ensure that the releases from the DENT project are as close to production ready as possible – which has often been a hinderance of other open-source NOS projects.

What do you think sets DENT apart from other industry alliances?

Serving on the Governance Board of the DENT project, I believe that the DENT community as a whole is one that is being driven by the input of the full community – more so than perhaps some other projects in the open-community space.   While it is always good to have a driving beacon, it is important that one voice does not overpower the group as a whole – and the DENT project does a good job in balancing these inputs for the good of the community.

How will DENT help your business?

We believe that DENT will help in making open-networking much more accessible into the Enterprise segment – which expands the market opportunity which Edgecore Networks addresses.  We see more choices as a good thing for our customers and look forward to Open Networking benefiting and ever larger group of organizations.

What advice would you give to someone considering joining DENT?

Reach out and talk to other member organizations regarding the goals and charter of the DENT project.  You’ll find that the members are all well aligned with one another in wanting to see an open solution for the Distributed Enterprise emerge.   Then get involved – like anything in life you get out of it what you put into it.  If you are an Enterprise, come to the table with the real-world problems & challenges you face – and be open to exposing these to the community and from that you’ll benefit from solutions that can emerge.  If you are on the semiconductor or equipment manufacturer side – think less about you’re sharing information with your competition – and more about how we are collectively growing a market that will serve to benefit us all.   And if you are a third partner solutions / integration company, think about how you can bring new, innovative ways of serving your customers using DENT-enabled solutions – and work with the parties in the Community today to bring those to light.

At DENT, we are kicking off a new Member Spotlight blog series to highlight our community members and organizations. Our first QA is with Kishore Atreya, Software Product Line Manager at Marvell. Intersted in being spotlighted? Send an email request to PR@dent.dev

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

(Kishore): Marvell is a leading provider of data infrastructure semiconductor solutions which includes a comprehensive networking portfolio under which the Marvell Prestera^® Ethernet switch product family resides. We have been building switches for well over 20 years with millions of devices in production and deployed worldwide for a wide variety of use cases including enterprise, retail edge, carrier, data center, and SMB. In addition to our silicon portfolio, we work with and maintain a healthy software ecosystem with support of  SDKs, NOSs and HALs.

Why is your organization adopting an open-source approach?

(Kishore): We are strong believers in enabling customers to control their own destiny. Open source is a great vehicle for this. The modern network operating system is transitioning to a commoditized set of features based on standards. An open source approach democratizes the data plane and control planes of a network thereby providing operators choice. Enabling users to build their own features and applications to run on top of a standard NOS allows the ultimate flexibility in deployment and facilitates advanced use cases of networking equipment such as data in-flight machine learning.

Why did you join DENT and what sort of impact do you think DENT has on the edge, networking, and IoT industries?

(Kishore): We joined DENT because we are strong believers in its mission and because of the fact that it is based off of Linux. Linux provides operators the ability to manage switches like servers which is advantageous for deployments that are spread out over multiple branches, such as that of the retail edge. Additionally, since DENT is Linux-based, it’s extremely easy for users to add their own applications on top of the switch OS. These applications can take advantage of on-switch CPU resources to reduce latency in environments where there are many endpoints such as in the emerging edge applications scenario. Data can be aggregated in the network and pushed out, minimizing the amount of northbound traffic going to a data center.

Additionally, we  saw that there is a gap in the market with respect to NOS disaggregation for enterprise and edge networks. DENT fills this gap quite nicely with its targeted approach to the edge.

What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the DENT community?

(Kishore): Being a part of the DENT community provides silicon vendors unparalleled access to emerging trends in enterprise, edge, and networking, giving us insight to challenges these industries are facing. Working with the DENT community, we can put together unique solutions to help address the specific requirements of what we call the borderless enterprise. As mobility and cloud applications extend the boundaries of the traditional campus environment, deployments at the access and edge will continue to grow. We are committed to helping bring innovative solutions for automated and personalized experiences within the borderless enterprise across the smart edge and retail networking.

What sort of contributions has your team made to the community, ecosystem through DENT participation?

(Kishore): Our team is an active participant in the community. We are working on the Technical Steering Committee to drive the DENT roadmap and are also contributors to test cases and switchdev drivers. The Arthur release, announced by DENT in December, is running on multiple 1G and 10G platform deployments incorporating Marvell’s Prestera Ethernet switches in production.

What do you think sets DENT apart from other industry alliances?

(Kishore): The open governance model of DENT is what sets DENT apart from other alliances. Every member has a seat at the table and decisions are made for the betterment of the community.

How will DENT help your business?

(Kishore): DENT helps our business by plugging a hole in the larger disaggregated NOS market for enterprise and edge use cases. Having a NOS supported by a rich community allows our sales and channel partners to put together proposals addressing customers who need a NOS for enterprise or edge use cases, but do not have the resources to do one on their own. We are able to train our channels to promote DENT via the strength of its community which includes system integrators, ODMs, silicon vendors, and end customers.

What advice would you give to someone considering joining DENT?

(Kishore): Do it — the more the merrier! If you have a problem that needs solving for emerging edge or enterprise networking use cases, come be a part of the only community NOS that is directly targeting that space. DENT is not for one user—it is for all and every voice is recognized at the table.