Name: Amar Kapadia
Position: Co-founder
Company: Aarna Networks
Please tell us a little about your organization?
Aarna Networks creates a platform for orchestration, lifecycle management, and automation of cloud native 5G network services and edge computing applications. We use the Linux Foundation ONAP project to build our product. Our current product uses the ONAP Frankfurt release that has comprehensive support for 5G. We are based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Bangalore.
Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?
The telco industry is going through a major disruption transitioning from a hardware approach to a software one. 5G and edge computing are only accelerating this trend. With a software approach it is extremely important to have a vendor neutral orchestration, management, and automation solution. Open source provides this benefit; furthermore, open source ensures no vendor lock-in and better adherence to customer requirements.
Why did you join LFN and what sort of impact do you think LFN has on the networking industry?
ONAP is the de-facto open source network orchestration, management, and automation software. By joining LFN, we are able to work with the top minds in this field and to bring this software to our customers in the form of a commercially supported product.
What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the LFN community?
By joining LFN, we have the ability to influence the project, both in terms of technical and marketing topics, to make sure that our vision of a fully cloud native 5G/edge computing world comes to fruition. An LFN membership also gives us more credibility with customers.
What contributions has your team made (or plans to make) to the community/ecosystem through LFN participation?
We are active members of the ONAP project. Specifically, we contribute to CDS, OVP, ONAP documentation, and the ONAP Kubernetes plugin. We also participate in use case blueprints in OPNFV and Akraino communities where ONAP is being used for cloud native 5G and SD-WAN use cases.
What do you think sets LFN apart from other industry alliances?
We have not encountered any other organization that is as open as LFN. LFN is also more collaborative than other organizations that tend to have a siloed view of the world. We find it much easier to work with other standards development organizations and open source projects on ONAP because of this collaborative approach.
How might LFN help your business?
The LFN open source license is very attractive to companies such as ours as it opens up a number of different business models. Also, since LFN projects get visibility at the highest levels of a telco organizations, we also benefit in our sales and marketing efforts. Finally, LFN events also allow us to meet like minded individuals that could be partners or customers.
What advice would you give to someone considering joining the LFN community?
The main advice we have is to not hesitate in joining the community. Months could go by in analysis-paralysis. Or you could use those same months to collaborate with the community, learn about the technology and the latest best practices, and start to use the software to generate business value.
