Ilona:
Hello everyone and welcome to Aviz Network’s podcast series. In every episode we meet with our customers, partners or industry experts to talk about all things networking. Today we are talking about the open source networking operating system called SONIC. My name is Ilona Gabisnky  and i am the moderator of this webinar and i am absolutely trilled be joined by the networking industry experts from Celestica, Art Ford and Paul Lysander, Art and Paul, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here today.

Art:
thank For having us

Paul:
It’s good to be with you

Ilona:
So how about before we dive in the all nitty-gritty topic of SONIC, we break the eyes with some rapid fire. Okay, Art, let’s start with you, Can you name one YouTube show that never fails to make your love?

Art:
You know, I would have to go with office space. I’m a big fan of the movie office space and it reminds me of early in my career. You know, I think the movie was from 1999. It’s about in-attack software company and they go through a lot of really comical situations that I actually experienced myself early in my career. Anybody that’s watching that’s even younger in career go watch it. It’s still applicable to that.

Ilona:
Definitely. Absolutely. So Paul, now to you, what’s the best career advice that you’ve ever received and why?

Paul:
Well, that’s an interesting question. You know, many people have obviously different views on career and how you just advance your career and how to develop your career. Probably the best piece of advice has been to do something that’s meaningful and impactful. So look at the things that actually have value to the industry, to customers and obviously to where you work and obviously to do whatever those tasks are to do them, you know, sitting you well.

Ilona:
That’s definitely very insightful advice and something that our listeners can take to their heart. So Art, now I have a question for you. If you had an opportunity to invite for dinner any tech influencer tonight, who would it be and why?

Art:
Besides mining Bitcoin, I mean, I, you know, as good as it sounds, I would probably pick Steve Jobs. He was just so influential, changed our lives in so many ways beyond just technology, just an actual everyday life. So I think, you know, if I had an opportunity to go back and talk and meet somebody would probably see.

Ilona:
Yeah, that’s a fascinating choice. And you know, even if I could see it in the audience and listen him speak, that would be a great opportunity for me as well. So yeah, if we could go back in time and if you could invite Steve Jobs who dinner, can you invite me also? Okay, so Paul, last question before we get to Sonic. If you had the opportunity to master any skill, any technical skill overnight, what would it be?

Paul:
I would focus on foundational skills. I think the, you know, it’s easy to sort of chase the next shiny object. But to me, it’s all about foundations. So probably if I had to look back and just pick a sub area, I’m choosing engineering and computer science mathematics, like the core, core disciplines, because everything else builds on top of that. So really understanding mathematics, linear algebra, calculus, differential equations, logic, those sorts of subjects, and then the applied science is definitely engineering, physics, biology, chemistry, that are really application of principles. So sort of first principles thinking, how to think logically, how to problem solve, those are all foundational skills that will extend the matter of what that, the next technology way might be.

Ilona:
Now let’s get to our main topic, which is Sonic. Can you tell us a little bit about Sonic, what it is, and why is it so transformative for the industry?

Art:
Yeah, you know, Sonic is, you know, and it’s simple as far as say free open source network operating system based on legs. Sonic actually stands for software for open networking in the cloud, and it was designed to support a cloud data center. Originally, it was developed by Microsoft and the Open Compute Project, sometimes referred to as OCP. And in about 2022, Microsoft seeded oversight of Sonic to the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation still works with OCP on now the stewardship and growth of the project. The cool thing about Sonic is that it has all of the necessary networking software components to support a fully functional L3 switch device. And because of its open nature, it allows cloud operators and network administrators to use a common software stack that costs multiple vendors and multiple platforms. Today, there’s over 100 different platforms that support Sonic and many of those vendors offer enterprise level service and support, like Celestica. Celestica also is a member of Linux Foundation, as well as OCP. And we wholeheartedly both support both of those industry consortiums, So that’s it in a nutshell.

Ilona:
Yeah, this is great. Thanks for that insight. Now over to you, Paul. So considering the evolving needs of the modern enterprises, why do they increasingly prefer Sonic?

Paul:
Customers are telling us a number of reasons why they’re looking at Sonic in a real tangible way. The first thing is the openness. So, you know, one of the taglines that’s often used is, Sonic is Linux for networking. And everyone, at least in technology, understands Linux and understand the value, the openness of it, the open systems aspect of it. So Sonic really is analogous to that in the network, right? So the open source nature of it, the ability for customers and partners to be a beloved open source software in that manner. The second thing is just the overall community. Dude, there’s a large community. If you look at across partners, the different aspects to what it means to run a network, there’s a huge and growing ecosystem for partners. And so really, on top of that would be sort of the value added you can get with Sonic. You can build on top of it. You can extend it very easily. So those three things really are sort of the key linch pens to why Sonic has gained some abstraction.

Ilona:
Although you mentioned the important aspect of community. Can you elaborate a little bit more how it uses the community to stay innovative and ahead of industry trends?

Paul:
Sure. So there’s a number of working groups as part of the Sonic community. So these working groups really focus on various key subtopics within the networking stack. So, for example, the pens group, which is focused on enterprise features. So typically, as Arp mentioned, it started in the data center and it’s evolved to the point that now customers are seriously looking at deploying it in the campus environment. Canvas enterprise environments all the way to the edge. So because the data center has a unique set of features versus enterprise which also has a unique set of features, the extensibility of being able to add features easily because of the extensible nature of Sonic. The other interesting thing going back to the advantage is it’s a single OS, single network operating system that can scale up or down. Typically vendors don’t do that. They’ve got different technology stacks depending on if it’s in the data center or if it’s in the campus or at the same OS, same network operating system that can scale depending on where it is in the network.

Ilona:
Thanks for those insights, Paul. Now, Arp, turning over to you. Can you elaborate a little bit how pairing Sonic with Celestica switches enhances network capabilities and what unique advantages it brings to the table?

Art:
Great question. So combining Sonic with Celestica’s portfolio of data center and enterprise campus switches brings tremendous value to our customers. Customers looking for a strong, reliable and open network environment. There’s a number of points that I would bring to bear on this that Celestica brings to the table. First, we offer a hardened version of the community software. So we do extensive testing, but the difference is that it is an open version. And the next point to that is that we also offer enterprise class service contracts for customers that are looking for additional peace of mind, service and support, somebody to call if they do need the help on that community version. The third point that I would make is that because we’re members of the Linux Foundation and we’re members of the working groups that Paul mentioned, we bring fixes back into the community. We bring additional functionality back into the community. And then the fourth point that I would make is that some of our customers want additional function that is not offered in community and we can bring that to bear as well. So the combination of what Sonic offers and our approach to how we bring that to market is very unique and enables our customers to to bring an enterprise level product that is scalable.

Ilona:
Right, this is really some great advantages that you bring to customers and pairing Sonic with Celestica switches. Paul, would you like to add anything to that?

Paul:
Yeah, so we have a whole we have a full suite of switches all the way from spine, leaf, top of rack switches and management switches as well, as well as all the way down to the campus down to you know down to let’s say campus that’s deploying switches in their in their alignment closet. The nice thing about Sonic as we just mentioned earlier is that that same software stack scales up and down. Right, that’s a huge advantage for Sonic. So operationally a customer when they’re familiar with Sonic, they can deploy it in their network in the data center into the campus and enterprise all the way down to the edge and their support staff, their network engineers can fully manage and implement these these switches running Sonic across the entire the entire network. So that’s that’s a huge advantage. So we have at Celestica we have spine switches, we have 800 gate switches, we have 400 gate switches, we have you know top of rack, leaf switches and campus switches and they all run Sonic and community Sonic. Our focus is community. So the main thing for us is community driven features. Right, so that’s a big that’s a big emphasis for us and that’s really what drives our engineering effort.

Ilona:
That’s right and I just wanted to add also we have Celestica switches in our one center and that’s where we test them and provide reports to customers quality of the quality deployments of Sonic. So that’s awesome. So thanks for explaining this. So now considering that Sonic was initially designed for hyperscalers, what makes it also suitable for enterprise level organizations? What do you think?

Art:
What I would say is that the it’s it’s really the architecture that lends itself. I mean it did start in the world the complex world of hyperscalers but its model inherently transfers over to the traditional so-called enterprise class market and a lot of that has to do with the architecture. I’ll ask Paul just a second to dive in a little bit more on the architecture but I mean things when you look at it like choice, control, savings, those are all features that are applicable to the enterprise market. There is a strong appetite to increase the feature set all the way through the edge. You look at things the challenges that they face such as moving workloads from cloud to cloud or from cloud to on-prem. So I would say that as we look at increasing the feature set just because of the way that it’s architected with containers and it gives it the capability to move across from a hyperscaler market to an enterprise level market. And Paul you want to expand a little bit on some of the architecture things?

Paul:
Yeah the architecture is really the underpinning, right? So it’s built on Linux underlying operating system is Linux and on top of that is containers. So they’ve containerized all these features like routing and various other core network and features. So the ability to containerize the functionality and have separation of services and use enterprise as communication for them to communicate between each other really lends us up to a much more modern architecture. Typically most architectures in the past were monolithic. This is microservices based. So the architecture itself is really the core differentiator for Sonic.

Art:
Oh that’s great.

Ilona:
This is a great inside and a great advantage of communicating and so on it. So thanks for the detailed overview and as we conclude I have a final question to both of you. Considering the complexities of Sonic, what do you think how easy it would be for customers just to implement it on their own or they would say they would need a partner who can help them enable Sonic in today environments?

Art:
Yeah okay if I address this one first and then I’ll hand it off. It’s always better to partner and we look at things like you know functionality, performance, support, things like that. You know you look at software partners like Aviz and they are 100% dedicated to building an open cloud and AI first network. You look at you know they have a whole team of experienced and visionary leaders that are looking to bring out that best in class performance and along with Celestica we stand with you to support our customers to make that experience exceptional and that’s really what we’re looking for in a partner like Aviz and I think that the way that we work together brings that experience to our customer base.

Ilona:
Absolutely yes thank you very much Art. Paul is there anything you would like to add?

Paul:
Yeah I think the partnerships are so important because they really use an ecosystem of different companies that bring you know their own value add to the overall sort of effort. So customers do need partners and partners need partners you know so that’s really the value that we see in the whole effort behind Sonic. There is efforts on the development piece for ongoing enhancements to Sonic itself and then when you look at the orchestration and management that is another layer of partnerships and there’s many organizations that are focused just on that layer so and then of course there’s a harbor piece. So you know there’s many peace on and there’s many partners that each have their own role to play in really making Sonic successful.

Ilona:
That’s great. Thank you Art and Paul for joining us today and for providing your deep insights into Sonic and its transformative impact on the industry and thank you for all the listeners for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed our discussion today. Don’t forget to join us for the next episode but for now let’s stay connected and keep innovating.