The LF Edge community is comprised of a diverse set of member companies that represent the IoT, Enterprise, Cloud and Telco Edge. The Member Spotlight blog series highlights these members and how they are contributing to and leveraging open source edge solutions. Today, we sat down with Madhu Kashyap, Director of Product Management for Netsia, to discuss the importance of a open source, their infrastructure and need for communication at the edge, how they contribute to the Akraino Edge Stack project and the impact of being a member of the LF Edge community.
Can you tell us a little about your organization?
Netsia develops fixed broadband and wireless solutions for the telecom industry. Netsia’s vision is to provide a shared infrastructure for fixed mobile convergence at the edge.
Netsia’s SEBA (Software-Enabled Broadband Access) solution transforms the traditional Passive Optical Network (PON) used in fixed access networks (FTTx) through an open, programmable, cloud-native, vendor agnostic future-proof platform, that is based on Cloudification, Virtualization, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). It leverages network disaggregation, open source software and white box economies at the network edge.
Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?
Netsia is an active participant in open source communities and standards bodies and provides enriched telco-grade distributions of open source platforms in a continuous manner with long term support.
Communication Service Providers (CSPs), both fixed and mobile, are looking to transform their PoPs (Point of Presence) / Central Offices (COs) as edge clouds. The current architecture is rigid, closed, monolithic and purpose-built leading to high CAPEX and OPEX due to vendor lock-in. CSPs want to use virtualization, cloudification, SDN, NFV technologies by leveraging open source software and disaggregated white boxes.
Open source software helps Netsia to gather CSPs’ requirements and share the cost of development with the community. Netsia adds value by hardening and productizing open source.
Why did you join LF Edge and what sort of impact do you think LF Edge has on the edge, networking, and IoT industries?
Netsia is focused on the Edge. CSPs are looking to consolidate various access network technologies to a common management platform that includes SDN controller, orchestration, VIM etc. while addressing the latency and bandwidth demands of 5G networks.
The LF Edge community provides the industry with a solid foundation for managing the edge with its development of blueprints across different domains and shaping the future of edge networking and IoT.
What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the LF Edge community?
LF Edge provides a dedicated forum of like-minded organizations be it operators or vendors who believe in openness through design, architecture, APIs or code to drive edge transformation. By participating in LF Edge, Netsia stands to gain from the collective innovation that drives the industry forward. With a community like this the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and organizations can benefit greatly from the different perspectives and ideas that are generated in the course of project planning, design and implementation.
What sort of contributions has your team made to the community, ecosystem through LF Edge participation?
Netsia is actively involved in the Akraino project and the SEBA Blueprint.
What do you think sets LF Edge apart from other industry alliances?
Being part of the LF umbrella opens many doors and adds significant heft to initiatives that are taken seriously by the industry. Harmonization with other open source communities and working with upstream projects LF Edge makes sure there is no duplication and overlap of effort.
How will LF Edge help your business?
As LF Edge blueprints get adopted by industry it helps Netsia by differentiating itself in a highly competitive field. LF Edge provides the name recognition and brand that is recognized in the industry as innovating with cutting edge technology.
What advice would you give to someone considering joining LF Edge?
Netsia would definitely encourage and advocate for anyone considering LF Edge membership. The level of commitment by the community is unparalleled and provides high visibility to member organizations through events and other marketing activities.
To learn more about Akraino Edge Stack, click here. To find out more about our members or how to join LF Edge, click here.
Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the LF Edge Slack Channel and share your thoughts in the #community or #akraino channels.
