The second largest mobile operator in the US, AT&T this week joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member, announced the nonprofit organization for advancing open source management for mass collaboration.
This follows news of the company's contribution of several million lines of ECOMP code to The Linux Foundation, as well as the new Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project based on production-ready code from AT&T and OPEN-O contributors. Chris Rice, senior vice president of AT&T Labs, joins The Linux Foundation Board of Directors and was also recently selected as the ONAP chairman.
Linux Foundation Platinum members include AT&T, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm Technologies and Samsung.
AT&T has a strong history of collaboration with open source communities, which includes OPNFV, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Open Container Initiative, OpenStack, ON.Lab, Open Networking Foundation and the OpenDaylight End User Advisory Board. The company also manages more than 70 GitHub projects.
Chris Rice, Chairman of ONAP and SVP of AT&T Labs
So, it was a natural decision for us to join The Linux Foundation. SDN is helping us meet performance, capital spending and efficiency goals and we expect continued benefits. But more so, we recognize that the open source community accelerates innovation.
Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation
AT&T's membership and the launch of the ONAP Project kick off a year that promises to be pivotal in open networking. We welcome Chris to our Board of Directors and look forward to close collaboration with AT&T to rapidly advance SDN and virtual network functions.
