Dive Brief:

• The Open Networking User Group (ONUG), a user group for enterprise IT managers, is promoting four technologies that it says could help enterprises build better networks that can efficiently run. 

• The group said current platforms and protocols for software-defined infrastructure were developed around the needs of vendors and service providers, not businesses.

• ONUG is promoting and pushing for development of technologies they say would better serve enterprise needs.

Dive Insight:

ONUG is looking to help promote further development of an Open SD-WAN Exchange to allow multiple SD-WANs to work as one; an Open Interoperable Control Plane to help tie together different parts of a data center;  an Open Traffic Management Format, which would take data from different sources and move it toward an analytics platform; and an Open Network State Format for information about the state of network devices. 

The four initiatives were announced Tuesday at ONUG’s conference in California.

ONUG wants others to develop the four technologies. But if no one does, ONUG founder Nick Lippis said the group will form a new kind of organization to develop the ideas themselves. 

The group plans to hold four workshops over the next few months to enable enterprise IT workers, vendors and academics to define the proposals and decide where they should be carried out. Enterprises should keep an eye on this group’s work, as they are ambitious and want to develop the tools—which could help companies better manage their technology—within the next year.