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Letter from the Director
Last year marked a fundamental change for the Intel® Network Builders program. Supported by ecosystem growth, 2015 was all about rolling up our sleeves and getting to work as a unified driving force for network transformation. We saw tremendous momentum as more and more partners joined us and we closed the year with 185+ company partners. However, we know that it is only through the activation of the ecosystem that we will ultimately drive the industry toward the transformation of the network through the adoption of SDN and NFV solutions.
Over the last year, we saw an ecosystem mature enough to begin the journey of delivering the promise of a software defined network. Through deep partner collaborations, Intel Network Builders delivered close to 40 PoCs, trials, and deployment publications. We gathered more than 1,500 people across the globe at our events, delivered a robust webinar and podcast series, and most importantly, provided direct engagement opportunities for IT professionals developing the flexible, reliable, and optimized solutions of the future.
What's in store for 2016? Intel Network Builders will keep building on the solid pillars we already have in place. We will continue to support and expand innovation toward solution stack optimization, develop and share proven integration strategies through our solution blueprints, and drive interoperability benchmarking for faster and more reliable multivendor solution deployments. We will ramp the newly launched Intel® Network Builders University and continue to deliver the various initiatives that support each and every partner that joins us on the mission of accelerating the transformation of the network.
What can you do to help? The call for action is a simple but extremely important one. Get involved! Make sure to stay in touch, attend our events, register for our newsletter, and take advantage of our virtual engagement opportunities and website capabilities. Not sure how to start? Write to us at contact@networkbuilders.intel.com. We are here to help.
The promise of a new business reality for the network is within our grasp, but we can only reach it together.
Looking forward to working with you in 2016!
Renu Navale
Intel Network Builders Director
Welcome Our New Ecosystem Members
The Intel® Network Builders program continues its growth, welcoming new partners ECI Telecom* and Dimension Data,* and communications service providers British Telecom* and Turk Telekom.* The ecosystem has more than 185 partner members and nine end user members.
To see all our ecosystem members, visit the Ecosystem Partners page and the End User Members page on our website.
Intel® Network Builders Interoperability Workshop Recap
Last month, at the Intel® Network Builders Summit at Carrier Network Virtualization (CNV), we hosted our first-ever interoperability workshop. The workshop included presentations from Intel, Tech Mahindra,* and TCS* and focused on the current interoperability and integration challenges facing NFV deployments. Attendees also discussed some of the tools and solutions that exist today that are aimed at assisting the industry in interoperability testing.
Intel provided a list of key areas that our partners can focus on to increase interoperability and make integration efforts easier. The focus areas suggested by Intel include debug tools, license management, and installation and configuration tools.
Interoperability is one of the key pillars in the Intel® Network Builders Fast Track initiative. Watch for more programs on this important topic in 2016 on our member portal.
Blog: Building Cloud-Ready Networks—The Time Is Now
Sandra Rivera, a Vice President in the Data Center Group and General Manager of the Network Platforms Group for Intel, discusses in this blog how the transformed network will consist of virtualized network functions (VNFs) running on standard, high volume servers—solutions that are more programmable and reconfigurable than traditional network elements, enabling the intelligence and flexibility the network needs. Higher performance and capacity is also required throughout the entire network.
This combination of performance and agility is made possible through Intel technology innovation, and our launch event in November showcased two new Intel products. The Intel® Ethernet Multi-host Controller FM10000 is the first high bandwidth server networking product to integrate Intel's best-of-breed Ethernet controllers with advanced Ethernet switch capabilities. The new Intel® Xeon® Processor D-1500 Product Family of processors is the first Intel Xeon-class system-on-a-chip (SoC)—it's smaller; it uses less power; and it is perfect for moving intelligence and performance to the network edge.
Video: Realizing the Network of the Future with Intel
Sandra Rivera, a Vice President in the Data Center Group and General Manager of the Network Platforms Group at Intel, explains the challenges and benefits of the transformation taking place in the network and the rich, immersive user experiences it brings in a new video. She shares Intel's technology leadership role in the network transformation in both hardware and software ingredients and explains how it extends to ecosystem enabling, reference designs for the industry, contributions of open source and open standards, and engagement with end users.
Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) 2.2 Released
The DPDK 2.2 was successfully released and can now be downloaded from the DPDK website.
Some of the release's key features are included below. For the full list, see the 2.2 section of the Release Notes. For further details, see the DPDK user documentation.
An Intel® Network Builders webinar describing the features included in the 2.2 release is available here.
Network Edge Virtualization Software Development Kit Release
The Intel® Network Edge Virtualization (NEV) SDK 0.1.0 has been released. The Intel NEV SDK is the first kit of its kind with all the NFV elements to create, develop, and test mobile edge computing (MEC) applications and services. This release includes MEC Reference Libraries, Intel® System Studio Tools Suite 2015, Wind River* Titanium* Server evaluation license, and Polaris Networks* eNB and EPC emulators evaluation kit.
Visit the NEV SDK Intel® Network Builders website to request an SDK today.
White Paper: Creating a Better NFV Platform: Dell,* Red Hat,* and Intel Foster Interoperability
Dell,* Red Hat,* and Intel have worked together to deliver a truly open commercial offering. The Dell NFV platform uses open standards, open protocols, and open source—backed by an open ecosystem—to deliver a commercial NFV platform offering today.
Download a PDF of a white paper about this collaboration and visit the Intel® Open Network Platform page here.
The following table provides links to additional resources for Intel® Open Network Platform.
Project | Document Name/Link |
ONP RA | Intel® ONP Server Release 1.5 Performance Test Report https://01.org |
OpenStack* | OpenStack Enhanced Platform Awareness Intel Developer Zone |
OpenStack | AODH: Alarm Events in OpenStack https://01.org |
OpenStack | Smarter CPU Pinning in OpenStack Nova* http://www.intel.com |
OpenStack | EPA Features in OpenStack Kilo* https://www.brighttalk.com |
OpenStack | Getting Started with Openstack and OVS-DPDK https://github.com |
OvS | Open vSwitch* Enables SDN and NFV Transformation https://networkbuilders.intel.com |
OvS | Using Open vSwitch with DPDK https://github.com |
OvS | Using Open vSwitch with DPDK for Inter-VM NFV Applications Intel Developer Zone |
Video: Intel® Xeon® Processor D-1500 Performance Enhancements with Intel® ONP
This video showcases performance benchmark test results comparing Intel® Xeon® Processor D-1540 with Intel® Atom® C2750. Both systems are running Intel® Open Network Platform (Intel® ONP) Release 1.5 software. Watch it here.
Partner Summits 2016 Intel® Network Builders Event CalendarA new year brings new opportunities for engagement, and Intel® Network Builders has a 2016 proposed events calendar for you. The first event of the year will be a VIP Reception at Mobile World Congress on February 24 in Barcelona. Registration for this event will open next week. The VIP Reception at MWC is just the first opportunity for engagement in our 2016 calendar of events. Learn More
Intel Israel Telco NFV EventIntel Israel held its Telco NFV event on December 2. The main purpose of the event was to educate the local communications service providers and TEMs about Intel's NFV offerings, from processors to drivers to open source software contributions. The agenda included presentations from various groups within Intel as well as our partners VMware, Red Hat, Kontron, HP, and Wind River.* The event was well attended, with more than 400 people attending from 235 companies across three tracks (service provider, technology, and code modernization). Intel Israel plans to hold the event around the same time next year, so look for further information on this in 2016. |
The Hub
For our ecosystem's latest news, podcasts, webinars, blog posts, and more, visit The Hub. Recent contributions from our community have included the following:
Podcast: "Orchestrated Assurance," with Mats Nordlund, CEO and Co-founder of Netrounds*
Podcast: "Virtualizing Voice & Video," with Martin Taylor, CTO of Metaswitch*
Webinar: "Ensuring Your SDN & NFV Investment Is Future-Proofed," with Dr. Jay Perrett, Chief Technology Officer, Aria Networks*
Webinar: "Orchestrated End User Assurance Enabled by NFV," with Stefan Vallin, Ph.D., Product Management, Cloud & Virtualization, Tail-f (Cisco), & Mats Nordlund, Co-founder and CEO, Netrounds*
Join the Conversation on Twitter and NetworkIn
Until you can join your community members face-to-face again, stay in touch with the Intel® Network Builders ecosystem online: