ONF Projects Coalesce for Enterprise Edge Cloud

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) today released a platform that combines multiple projects under its purview to deliver 5G and LTE as private edge cloud service for enterprises. Aether, pronounced “ether,” is the first open source edge cloud platform and the first open platform supporting connectivity as a service, Timon Sloane, VP of marketing at ONF, told SDxCentral in a phone interview. Aether is based on Kubernetes, which he described as the “fundamental building block for the public cloud,” and it blends edge cloud, mobile edge computing and open radio access network (RAN) technology together. The non-profit, operator-led consortium believes the platform will enable more unique digital transformation efforts among enterprises. It’s not just a technology play, but by doing what we’re doing, we’re enabling new forms of collaboration and new open business models,” Sloane said. “The goal here is to support the APIs so that applications that are written to run in those public clouds can also run natively at the edge cloud.