Summary: The addition of Goldman Sachs to the ONF board shows that OpenFlow has caught the attention of a key group of potential customers: big financial firms' IT people.

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced that Steven M. Schwartz of Goldman Sachs has joined the board of the SDN Standards body, ONF.  This is a credibility-building announcement for the ONF as brings to the table a leading enterprise with cutting edge needs stating that OpenFlow is strategic to their firm.

I've known Steven since my Juniper Networks and Pareto Networks days -- and have tremendous respect for him --  he's known as a high integrity person with smart ideas around enterprise networking -- all clearly a plus for the ONF.

What's going to be even more interesting is how this SDN activity and ONF board membership plays out with Goldman Sachs' networking purchase decisions over the coming years with Cisco and VMware being strategic suppliers and a shiny new investment in Big Switch.

Undoubtedly, we'll see Big Switch controllers at Goldman, likely serving up OpenFlow to an OpenStack deployment -- and we'll have to see if they can provide the clout to bring Cisco and VMware to the OpenFlow table.

Open Networking Foundation Adds Goldman Sachs to the Board

Steven M. Schwartz to Contribute Experience and Expertise to the Strategic Direction of ONF

PALO ALTO, Calif., November 1, 2012 – The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Software-Defined Networking (SDN), today announced the election of Steven M. Schwartz of Goldman Sachs to the ONF Board of Directors. Mr. Schwartz serves as global head of Telecommunications and Market Data Services at Goldman Sachs, where he is responsible for global networks, voice, multimedia, and market data technology. As a member of the Board of Directors, Mr. Schwartz will contribute to the Foundation’s mission of propelling real world applications and implementations of SDN and the OpenFlow protocol.

“Steve’s commitment to open standards and his technical expertise in this demanding market sector will offer ONF a unique perspective, helping us to improve the quality and impact of our work and set a strategic path that will bring other enterprise companies into our movement,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “We are delighted to have him involved and look forward to his contributions to the organization.”

Mr. Schwartz has held several technology roles at Goldman Sachs over the last 20 years, including responsibility for engineering the firm’s data network infrastructure. He is currently responsible for helping to steer the path of open standards and technologies within Goldman Sachs’ computing and network environments, and with his team is in the process of developing a network infrastructure based on an open-source control plane and OpenFlow-compliant switching. He serves on the firm’s Technology Operating Committee, the Infrastructure Leadership Group and the Americas Technology Diversity Committee.

“Goldman Sachs has been a strong supporter of the open standards community and is committed to furthering the SDN movement and OpenFlow,” said Mr. Schwartz. “ONF’s mission to commercialize and promote SDN and its underlying technologies as a disruptive approach to networking is changing the way enterprise organizations are thinking about building networks and the role of network infrastructure in the larger datacenter ecosystem. I look forward to working with the ONF Board of Directors to continue to influence the open standards community, provide an enterprise perspective, and ultimately spur greater community involvement and development of products influenced by these open standards.”

About ONF

Launched in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo!, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a growing nonprofit organization with more than 80 members whose mission is to advance the commercialization and use of SDN and OpenFlow. ONF will accelerate the delivery and use of SDN and OpenFlow technologies and standards while fostering a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customers, and users. For further details visit the ONF website at: http://www.opennetworking.org.