Here's our weekly look at various goings-on in software defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), and related areas.

1. OpenDaylight Wrestles With the Calendar

It's the OpenFlow 1.3 plug-in that's holding up Hydrogen, the first OpenDaylight release. After missing their Dec. 9 goal for launching Hydrogen, the team has been focusing on getting that long-pole item completed so that Hydrogen can be ready to launch before Feb. 4, when the OpenDaylight Summit starts in Santa Clara, Calif.

Here's what David Meyer, Technical Steering Committee chair, reported from this week's OpenDaylight meeting:

"The key discussion centered around the status of the OpenFlow 1.3 plugin. The good news is that team will hit the agreed upon date for a release candidate (12.20.2013). We have a code freeze/decision point on 01.06.2014 at which time we will decide whether and how the 1.3 plugin will be included in the release. Other Hydrogen release issues discussed included bundle versioning and documentation."

You can read it for yourself, in context, on the OpenDaylight mailing list.

2. CloudNFV Gains ETSI NFV Approval

CloudNFV, the multivendor project led by consultant Tom Nolle of CIMI Corp., got its proof-of-concept (PoC) accepted by the ETSI NFV group.

CloudNFV's is the only formal PoC approved by ETSI so far — in fact, it was the only application filed so far, Nolle says. CloudNFV did get a bit of a head start; Nolle had founded the group this summer with the stated goal of developing proofs-of-concept, and his timing managed to intersect the arrival of Metaswitch's Project Clearwater, an open-source, cloud-based project for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) infrastructure that happened to fit the NFV bill.

3. Juniper Gets a Handle on Wandl

Juniper agreed to pay about $60 million to acquire Wandl, a software partner in the area of network monitoring and planning.

Nolle finds it unlikely that Juniper doing this as part of any major OSS/BSS initiative. "It would be a giant project for a company that never got its software or even network management story straight in the past," he writes in his blog. More likely, it's an NFV play, where Wandl could create a "shim layer" that makes OSS/BSS software think the entire network is one device, he writes.

4. Avago Stores Up

On a whole other scale, Avago agreed to a $6.6 billion deal to acquire Silicon Valley stalwart LSI. It's a play aimed primarily at getting Avago into the storage market.

5. DukeNet Tries Out SDN

DukeNet, a regional fiber provider based in Charlotte, N.C., announced it's running SDN orchestration across the WAN as a proof-of-concept demo. The equipment vendors involved are Cyan and Accedian, a pairing we'd highlighted on a recent DemoFriday™.

6. Another Contender for OpenCompute

A few weeks ago, we'd mentioned that Interface Masters, the switch company you've probably never heard of, had submitted a design to the Open Compute Project's networking project. Well, the official press release was delayed, but it finally came out this week, proclaiming that the design's name is the Niagra 2948-12XL-OCP. Have a look.

The design goes beyond switching to include a Data Plane Processing (DPP) module for running Layer 4-7 functions on the Broadcom Trident II chip.

7. Spirent Meets Ofelia

A test bed called "OpenFlow in Europe: Linking Infrastructure and Applications" (Ofelia) has chosen Spirent as its partner for testing SDN and OpenFlow. This means participants will have access to Spirent TestCenter Virtual, meaning they can connect their virtual machines to some virtual machines running Spirent code, or they can insert Spirent virtual machines into their test environments.

8. Shaking the Magic 8-Ball

'Tis the season for New Year's predictions (and we have a couple of posts along those lines coming, don't worry). Here are just a few we've found:

• Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), says 2014 is the year the "S" in SDN will take precedence. Which is great, because we're tired of hearing people argue about the "D" part.
• Bob Laliberte, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, shares a few thoughts about the near-term future of Cisco's Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI).
• Meanwhile, Overture Networks CEO Mike Aquino delivers his prognostications in video format.

9. And Furthermore

... MPLS no longer has a place in the data center, writes Greg Ferro of Packet Pushers. Why? VXLAN.

... Did you know Microsoft Lync was an SDN thing? It is now; they released an API on Tuesday.