Carrier giant AT&T has been an advocate and user of open-source technologies as part of its network and cloud operations for the last few years. Not only has AT&T been a user of open-source technologies, it has been active contributor as well.
Now AT&T is taking the next big open-source step and donating a project to be run as a Linux Foundation project.
The Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) is an effort that AT&T has been building for several years to help enable its network transformation for virtualization.
“ECOMP is critical in achieving AT&T’s Domain 2.0 imperatives to increase the value of our network to customers by rapidly on-boarding new services (created by AT&T or 3rd parties), enabling the creation of a new ecosystem of cloud consumer and enterprise services, reducing Capital and Operational Expenditures, and providing Operations efficiencies,” the AT&T ECOMP project description states.
AT&T executives have spoken about ECOMP at multiple open-source events over the course of 2016, including the Open Networking Summit, often being asking by people in the audience when it might become open-source.
“The launch of this project is one of the most momentous steps forward for Open Source Networking,” Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation, said in a statement. “We are excited to facilitate the placement of this code into open source.”
“With over two years of production experience, ECOMP allows users to create new services in an automated manner,” he added.
AT&T isn’t the only vendor that has an interest in ECOMP, the new project has already garnered the support of Amdocs, AT&T, Bell Canada, Brocade, Ericsson, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Metaswitch and Orange. The new project joins multiple existing networking projects at the Linux Foundation including, OPNFV, OpenDaylight, CORD, FD.io, ONOS, Open vSwitch and OpenSwitch.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at EnterpriseNetworking Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
