Kontron, a provider of white-box hardware, has purchased Inocybe Technologies, a company that will bring its OpenDaylight SDN controller expertise. Kontron, which is owned by parent company S&T, isn’t yet saying how much it paid for Inocybe until the public company S&T informs its shareholders.

Kontron’s SymKloud platform supports the deployment of virtualized services using SDN and NFV. “Our strategy has been to integrate open source on top of platforms that are as open as possible,” said Robert Courteau, general manager of Kontron’s communications business. “We are a designer, manufacturer, and integrator."

The company competes against the likes of hardware original equipment manufacturers such as Super Micro as well as Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Radisys. In terms of software, earlier this year Kontron added the latest OpenStack and Kubernetes iterations to its SymKloud platform.

“We are strong in compute solutions and storage,” said Courteau. “Networking has always been part of our offering, but Inocybe covers the networking side.”

Inocybe has been heavily involved as a contributor to the OpenDaylight (ODL) SDN project. Inocybe competes with Lumina Networks, which has made a name for itself this past year with its Lumina SDN controller.

“The difference is that Lumina has a business model around selling services, taking what exists and making it fit your application,” said Courteau. “Inocybe is more of a product model, and its contribution to ODL is more product-based.”

Inocybe also competes in the same ecosystem as companies involved with the OpenSwitch project, such as Dell EMC. And Courteau also named a Czech Republic company, Frinx, as a competitor in this realm.

“I have no problem if someone wants a Dell switch with Inocybe open source software or uses our hardware or software as long as they can solve their problem,” he said.

In addition to Inocybe’s SDN controller technology, Kontron also picks up a new customer group — enterprises. And it gets Inocybe’s software delivery platform.

Courteau said the software delivery platform “really manages your ingredient list.” And in terms of enterprise customers, he said, “Inocybe has a track in the enterprise business where we have zero presence. We have a nice overlap in the traditional OEM side and some overlaps on the operators' side.”

Inocybe’s CEO John Zannos has been named GM of Kontron’s Inocybe business. And Mathieu Lemay, the founder of Inocybe, becomes chief strategy officer of the Inocybe business at Kontron. The integration is made easier by the fact that both Kontron and Inocybe are based in Montreal, Canada.