Every vendor and operator seeking to play in the new world of virtualization and software -defined networking (SDN) must claim to be ‘open’. One of the driving motives for carriers to move towards a software-dominated environment is to escape the old proprietary platforms and lock-ins. However, how different groups achieve ‘openness’ varies widely, and threatens the same kind of fragmentation and dead ends that afflicted deployers of proprietary hardware-focused networks. There is often confusion between openness – as in interoperability between different vendors’ solutions, enabled by standard interfaces and APIs – and open source. But increasingly, carriers see the two as inter-dependent, and the way to accelerate progress towards commercial SDN and NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) solutions. In a recent…