The SDN world is abuzz with the announcement that the OpenDaylight controller came from stealth mode today.  Why is this important?  Well, SDN and OpenFlow are fractured.  It is Mac vs. PC, Beta vs VHS, Coke vs. Pepsi all over again……multiplied by 100x and with a handful of players.

Vendor zealots and brand loyalists will nearly always side with their camp.  Heck, even I have some biases of personal preference.  But at the end of the day, the greater good is always most important.  This is why I’m cautiously optimistic about the daylight project.  From their about page:
“At this early stage of SDN adoption, the industry acknowledges the benefits of establishing an open, reference framework for programmability and control through an open source SDN solution. Such a framework maintains the flexibility and choice to allow organizations to deploy SDN as they please, yet still mitigates many of the risks of adopting early stage technologies and integrating with existing infrastructure investments.”
I find this refreshing.  I understand that there will be a bit of the “NDA this” and “closed that”.  These are new grounds being forged.  Vendors and humans in general don’t like to feel like they are giving away the farm and leaping into the fire. I tend to, personally, have a bit of the “jump and hope I have a parachute on” attitude.  I’m not risk averse and the thrill of the possibility of failure invigorates me.  That, obviously, is not how billion dollar companies think.  This is why the who’s who of Daylight members is so encouraging.

• Bigswitch
• Brocade
• Juniper
• Dell
• Cisco
• Citrix
• Ericsson
• IBM
• Microsoft
• Redhat
• NEC
• VMWare
• Arista
• Fujutsu
• HP
• Intel
• Nuage
• Plumgrid

Look at that list.  Now look again.  There are names on there that I never would have expected. This project is associated with the linux foundation, an organization that has a core value of “Providing Neutral Collaboration and Education”…  several names on this list are almost never associated with “Open”, Neutral” or “Transparent”.
This list and the implications of it by themselves are enough to raise heads, eyebrows and to potentially levitate Dana Barrett four feet above her covers.

Another double take piece of informationis that the project core components are based on the Cisco OnePK.  The fact that the core is the Cisco OnePK is certainly interesting, but the real gem of this is that there is potential collaboration and, more importantly, competition [and innovation] for an SDN controller and networking industry recognition that this “software defined networking revolution” is happening.
Just like any complicated relationship there will be problems, posturing, compromise and impasses.  My thoughts are that the outcome of whatever daylight becomes or doesn’t is actually irrelevant.  There is now a far more powerful and encompassing movement happening.  ASIC companies are on board. The Linux foundation is involved.  Flexibility is implied.  Community involvement is encouraged.  Mountains are moving.