“Networks are the last bastion of unvirtualized computing infrastructure,” said Dr. Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO of The Object Management Group, as OMG announced that new member Dell has proposed a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) standardization working committee within the OMG technology working groups.

“The growing interest in software-defined networks needs to be met as early as possible with flexible, transparent, powerful standards that help the industry grow rapidly and allow interoperable and portable solutions, and give customers real choice," Soley continued. "OMG welcomes Dell as a Contributing member and looks forward to their leadership in this new activity.”


Dr Richard Soley speaks with industry analyst Anne Thomas Manes in 2005

Strong interest in network virtualization exists in many of OMG’s hundreds of vendor, end-user, government agency and other members, Soley said. An initial open meeting on SDN is expected to be announced in April.

“We are extremely excited to join OMG and further Dell’s commitment to open standards through our participation,” said Tom Burns, general manager of Dell Networking. He added:

“We have a history of working with open standards and open source groups including the OMG, Open Networking Foundation, the Open Compute Project, OpenStack and many others to enable ecosystem development and growth, and customer choice for IT and data center applications and technologies. These communities give customers value because contributions from member companies are advanced based on merit and openness of the contribution. We look forward to furthering that value with OMG, and with companies that join this new working group as OMG advances the SDN concept.”