The LFN community is comprised of a diverse set of member organizations that work collaboratively across software and projects to provide platforms and building blocks for Network Infrastructure and Services across Service Providers, Cloud Providers, Enterprises, Vendors, and System Integrators that enable rapid interoperability, deployment, and adoption. This blog series highlights LFN members and the role they play in contributing to open source networking that will benefit the entire ecosystem.
Name: Sandeep Panesar
Title: SVP Strategic Engagements
Organization: Turnium Technology Group, Inc.
Please tell us a little about your organization?
TTGI connects everything, anywhere. TTGI seamlessly connects customers to the things that matter—people, data, devices, and applications—anywhere the Internet or data networks can reach by delivering a white-label or turnkey managed SD-WAN solution.
Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?
Our goal is to help LFN projects move forward by providing a flexible and reliable layer-3 network (SD-WAN) that can easily be integrated into sandbox and formal projects. Our solution can be delivered on bare-metal, in VMs, or in containers. The platform is simple to manage on open source technologies like Debian, Kubernetes, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Openstack, and Red Hat Openshift Container Platform.
Why did you join LFN and what sort of impact do you think LFN has on the networking industry?
LFN has undertaken technology demos that are near and dear to our hearts. Being a company composed of many telecom, data and networking professionals, we were very keen to be involved in the ongoing Virtual Central Office/5G cloud-native network project which was successfully showcased at Kubecon + CloudNativeCon in November 2019 and most recently the next iteration (including ONAP) was virtually showcased at Open Networking and Edge Summit in September 2020. This is the kind of practical project and thought leadership that is required to move telecommunications and networking forward and illustrates a path to commercial solutions leveraging open-source networking technologies. Joining the open source community provides TTGI with the opportunity to be able to contribute to its adoption and advancement, and to learn how we can be better members of that extended ecosystem.
What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the LFN community?
- Exposure to, and opportunity to participate in, a wide range of projects designed to advance adoption of new networking and communications technologies
- Highly collaborative environment in which contributions to projects are highly valued and new members are embraced
- Participation in a broad community and contributor ecosystem that are, all focused on the common goals of advancing the “business and people benefits” of technology
What contributions has your team made (or plans to make) to the community/ecosystem through LFN participation?
Our engagement with LF/LFN started with the 5G cloud-native project in 2019, and we continue to participate in ongoing iterations. That was an impressive introduction to the community and to Kubernetes and its potential impact on telecommunications. As a small company, we carefully balance resource allocation between public and commercial projects and have used our learning and relationships from 2019 to help us build internal projects that are commercializing aspects of what the 5G project demonstrated as possibilities. We plan to continue to contribute to the 5G-cloud native project and more deeply explore other active projects within the ecosystem.
What do you think sets LFN apart from other industry alliances?
- Projects that are designed to demonstrate practical solutions to technical and business problems.
- Focus on solving problems through collaboration and open source.
How might LFN help your business?
TTGI hopes to help LFN further leverage the use and adoption of SD-WAN within the open-source community, and expects to further its relationships with key members. We also look forward to participating in the advisory committees and to contributing to the community.
What advice would you give to someone considering joining the LFN community?
Do it! The LFN Community is open and inviting. There are many ongoing projects as well as technology demos in which your organization can get involved quickly. Helping hands are always welcome!
