Nokia has gone all-in on open networking by joining the SONiC Foundation as a Premier member, strengthening the open source NOS powering cloud, hyperscale, and AI-scale infrastructure.
Nokia has formally joined the Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) Foundation as a Premier member, a move that cements the company’s full-scale commitment to open source networking. The decision places Nokia directly within SONiC governance, with Mirza Arifovic, Nokia R&D Lead, taking a seat on the SONiC Governing Board. Industry watchers consider the step as Nokia “finally going all-in” on SONiC after years of consistent contributions.
Since 2019, Nokia has supported the open-source NOS with extensive engineering investments. These include data centre switching support, integration of SONiC NOS with Nokia’s Event-Driven Automation platform running on SR Linux NOS, and contributions such as chassis and multi-ASIC architecture designs, advancements in the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), enablement of ARM-based architectures, and optimisations for small-footprint deployments.
Rudy Hoebeke, VP, software product management, Nokia IP Networks Business Division, said the membership would “accelerate open source collaboration” and help Nokia’s technology power “the next generation of cloud and AI infrastructure.”
Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT at the Linux Foundation, added: “Nokia has played a critical role in advancing SONiC from its early days to today’s AI-scale deployments. Their leadership in high-performance hardware, expertise in software development, and global-scale network engineering strengthens the community and accelerates the adoption of open source NOS across hyperscale, enterprise, and telecom markets.”
Nokia joins a strong roster of SONiC Premier members, including Alibaba, Arista Networks, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Google, Intel, Marvell, Nvidia, and Microsoft, which originally developed the NOS for Azure. The ecosystem continues to expand, with Juniper Networks recently joining and HPE launching an AMD Helios-based AI rack-scale system built using SONiC open standards.
