OpenDaylight Releases First Open Source SDN Software

What will open source software-defined networking (SDN) mean for the channel? We're about to find about, as OpenDaylight, the SDN initiative overseen by the Linux Foundation, has now issued its first software release, called Hydrogen.

Announced Feb. 4, Hydrogen will allow enterprises to take advantage of the flexibilty, scalability and other types of innovative features available through SDN, which abstracts physical network infrastructure from the networks that computers actually use to communicate to implement a range of new functionality. The open source release is available in three editions:

For now, OpenDaylight seems to be anticipating most organizations using Hydrogen primarily for experimental purposes. That makes sense, since this is the inaugural release of a type of software that remains quite new and largely untested within production data centers.

As SDN gains greater adoption, however, and Hydrogen continues to evolve, the software very likely will take on a key role in production environments. And OpenDaylight's success in getting the Hydrogen release to the public at such an early stage in the development of the SDN market positions open source SDN to be a leading part of this niche.

The announcement came at the opening of the first-ever OpenDaylight Summit in Santa Clara, Calif. Voices in the grapevine tell The VAR Guy that some othe significant news will be coming from the summit. Stay tuned.