Open is playing an increasingly vital role in IT infrastructure. The current, dominant position of open source in server-side computing is well understood, and networking is now edging its way toward open source with the OpenDaylight movement. But is open source a natural evolutionary path for all IT disciplines, or do certain characteristics make some areas more attractive for open source than others?
When we think about networking as an industry, for example, we tend to compare its progress to the evolutionary track taken by the compute world. The assumption is that the networking industry will unfold in much the same way that the server industry did, marching past similar milestones. But this view of the world assumes that evolution follows a two-dimensional track, and industries are either parked somewhere along the continuum or they’re moving toward a predetermined end.