Linux Foundation Europe announces Project Sylva

Linux Foundation Europe, an independent trusted supporter and vendor-neutral home for open source projects in Europe, has announced the formation of Project Sylva. Designed to create a new, open source production-grade Telco Cloud Stack, Project Sylva’s common cloud software framework and adjacent Reference Implementation will reduce fragmentation of the cloud infrastructure layer for telecommunication and edge services. Sylva is the first project hosted by LF Europe, less than two months into its launch. 

Born out of a desire to reduce complexity and accelerate cloudification of the network within the EU’s privacy, security, and energy efficiency requirements, five European carriers (Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Orange, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom) and two vendors (Ericsson and Nokia) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to form the Sylva project to address challenges associated with telco and edge use cases within the EU and globally. Project Sylva will build on top of existing open source projects to provide implementations and extensions. Despite the specific European needs, the Sylva project has broader ambitions, and should be seen as a global player within the Telco Cloud ecosystem, as it’s open to collaborators outside the European Union as well. 

“I am beyond excited to see Sylva become the first community project hosted under Linux Foundation Europe. It directly delivers our vision to accelerate the impact that European-centric collaborations can have in the global ecosystem,” said Gabriele Columbro, general manager, Linux Foundation Europe. “Sylva is the perfect example of the high-impact open collaborations we see flourishing under LF Europe, as it brings together leading telco stakeholders to deliver innovation to address a concrete industry-wide business challenge.”

“We are pleased to collaborate closely with leading European telcos and vendors eager to more fully harness the power of open source to accelerate cloudification of the network within EU privacy and security guidelines,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “A unified approach to hosting 5G deployment applications from the Core to the RAN is critical for fostering innovation for broad digital transformation, augmenting work in LF Networking and LF Edge communities.”

Specific goals of Project Sylva include the following:

•       Release a cloud software framework to prioritise requirements, develop solutions to be integrated within existing open source components, and produce production-grade solutions to be leveraged within commercial products. 

•       Develop a reference implementation of this cloud software framework and create an integration and validation program to accelerate adoption of network functions within the cloud.