Do you want free software or do you want supported, enterprise grade software? Many people think that’s the question. It’s not.
Like all data geeks we wanted to understand the appetite by the networking industry for open source SDN and NFV, so the OpenDaylight Project commissioned a report from Gigaom Research that was made available today. It surveyed enterprises and service providers across North America to understand network pain points and where SDN and open source could help. What struck me was that 95 percent showed a strong bias for open source, and 76 percent said they want to consume open source from a commercial vendor. Does this seem at odds? Not at all. This isn’t wanting your cake and eating too. It is fully rational to want both. The report clearly illustrates an evolution that’s happened in the software industry where people want the best of both worlds: the flexibility, freedom and neutrality of an open source solution with the advantages of support and services that a commercial vendor can provide. Of course many will want to consume at the extremes (fully proprietary or fully open) and that’s fine too. I call the emerging dominant model Open Plus, and you can read more thoughts about that here.
Report: SDN, NFV, and Open Source: The Operator’s View, March 2014
