Open Grid Alliance: Quotes from Founding Members

Gorodenkoff Productions OU

PALO ALTO, Calif. – November 4, 2021 – Launched in April, the Open Grid Alliance (OGA) is today announcing membership and organizational updates that will establish a strong foundation from which it can rise. Specifically, the OGA is proud to welcome 26 new member organizations and announce its official formation as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization.

Read commentary below from Open Grid Alliance Founding Members. 

Accedian

“Accedian is obsessed with assuring the best possible experience for end-users. The Open Grid Alliance enables collaboration to reimagine the Internet. We provide visibility across the entire stack including virtualization, orchestration, automation and application layers to develop new levels of performance and deliver exceptional end-user experience, which is our number one priority.”

Richard Piasentin, Chief Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer, Accedian

Arctos Labs

"The Open Grid Alliance represents an important initiative to democratize and build a powerful platform for the next step in the evolution towards a society built on digital services. We are proud to be part of this initiative and believe that our technology contributes critical capabilities."

Mats Eriksson, CEO, Arctos Labs

Arm

“Arm Neoverse is addressing demands for a solid cloud to edge infrastructure to deliver on the promises of the next era of compute. As a new member of OGA, we are committed to working alongside other leaders in this industry to deliver solutions that enable new levels of intelligence, automation, and security.”

Eddie Ramirez, vice president of marketing, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm

Arrcus

“The Open Grid Alliance is a key step forward in creating a collaborative environment for next generation infrastructure. We are pleased to join the alliance and support it with our experience creating the Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform.” 

Keyur Patel, founder and CTO, Arrcus

blocz IO

"blocz IO Ltd is pleased to announce its position as a Founding Partner of the Open Grid Alliance (OGA) during its official formation as a non-profit organisation. With our own Edge Data Centre and Lab based within the Cambridge (UK) research park, working in private cloud, scaling networks, 5G, blockchain and more, blocz is a longer-term supporter of the inevitable evolution required to move from a legacy core-centric model towards an open decentralised internet starting at the edge.

With the fast-paced deployments of IoT, AI & ML, 5G networking, dWeb & dApps powered by web 3.0 being spearheaded by existing and start-up organisations, our requirements for low-latency networking, data security, data ownership and data placement is growing exponentially. blocz believes the OGA is the ideal foundation to drive the innovation needed to evolve the Internet at a global scale and address the issue of the ever-increasing digital universe and the ability of the internet to cope with our ever-growing dependency on data and low latency connectivity.”

Lee Norvall, CEO, blocz IO Ltd

CBRE

“We are really excited by the work being done by the Open Grid Alliance and contributing as a founder member. This is an important evolutionary step for technology and it is great to see cross-industry participation from so many important contributors. This is an important initiative for the future of edge computing and we are delighted to be part of this group building the new foundations.”

Duncan Clubb, Head of Digital Infrastructure Advisory, CBRE

Centech

“The acceleration of climate change is occurring at the same time as the increase in the use of cloud computing and AI solutions. At the rate things are going, the use of digital will allow us to enjoy new solutions for a better world but at the same time get worse for the planet if we stay with the current internet architectures.  We need change for a real better world and innovative deeptech startups should be part of this revolution.”

Richard Chénier, CEO, Centech

Commscore

"Today, more than ever, the demand for content is driving a relentless need for data. The promises of 5G are fueling exciting new innovations and the deployment of the Grid deeper to the edge is enabling low latency access to data and other resources. The OGA is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of network technology in order to deliver a smarter and more efficient tomorrow, and CommScope is excited to share in these values as a collaborative member that can help tackle connectivity challenges and shape the networks of the future."

Kyle Graebner, vice president of Global Scale Accounts, Commscore

Crown Castle

“The Open Grid Alliance provides a great industry platform for the coordination across software and infrastructure that will be necessary to bring edge computing to its full potential."

Paul Reddick, senior vice president, Strategy, Business, and Product Development, Crown Castle

DriveNets

“DriveNets disrupted the networking market, working with some of the largest service providers in the world to build networks like cloud. We believe that the Internet needs to be re-architected into a shared platform based on a wide eco-system of partners, to empower the next wave of application and service innovation. Being among the first members of OGA, we are excited to see it expanding so rapidly with a significant set of new members that are joining us to drive this change.”

Ido Susan, CEO, DriveNets

ÉTS

“The Grid, along with its optimization models, AI algorithms, and control policies, will contribute substantially to the revolution of the next-generation Internet.”

Kim Khoa Nguyen, associate professor, director of IoT and Cloud Computing Laboratory, University of Quebec’s Ecole de technologie superieure (ÉTS)

Guavus (a Thales company)

"Real-time analytics and AI are core to fulfilling the vision and plan of the OGA. Distributed, on-demand analytics intelligence is critical for gaining the customer experience and network operations insights companies will need across the shared global digital foundation the OGA is working to create. 

Guavus has been at the forefront of AI and big data analytics for more than 15 years -- the largest telecom providers worldwide have deployed our analytics solutions to overcome their business challenges impacting CX, service quality and operating efficiency, revenue and profitability across increasingly complex multivendor networks. And through our partnerships with the members of the OGA and other world-class industry leaders, we’re excited to see our SQLstream real-time streaming analytics being used by companies in other key verticals -- transportation, manufacturing, aerospace to smart cities…to see how they’ll make this digital transformation and create the best experience for their customers and a better world for us all."

Alex Shevchenko, CEO, Guavus (a Thales company)  

Highway9 Networks

“The Open Grid is critical to unleashing innovation at the edge – we are excited to leverage this distributed platform to bring compelling private mobile services to the enterprise.”

Allwyn Sequeira, CEO, Highway9 Networks

Hivelocity

“Hivelocity operates bare metal at the edge around the world. Our core belief is that in a multi-cloud world, plenty of workloads make sense on bare metal. The Open Grid Alliance is built for these workloads and Hivelocity is thrilled to participate.”

Richard B. Nicholas, senior vice president, corporate development, Hivelocity

Intel

“Fueled by the tremendous momentum of 5G and buildout of the edge, the industry needs an infrastructure that is programmable, scalable and efficient, from the network to the edge and to the cloud. Joining the Open Grid Alliance (OGA), and its vast ecosystem of industry leaders, will help enable these important infrastructure innovations that will make it possible to support a host of new applications and services.”

Caroline Chan, vice president, Network and Edge Group; general manager, Network Business Incubator Division, Intel

Invision AI

“Distributed compute, sensing and learning will enable true resiliency, privacy and scalability. At Invision AI, these principles are the core of everything we are doing. We are incredibly excited to be joining like-minded organizations to accelerate this evolution.”

Karim Ali, founder and CEO, Invision AI

ITRenew

“Re-architecting the Internet is both ambitious and essential. By enabling context aware solutions that span from core to edge, we can overcome the complexity, incompatibility and scarcity limitations businesses face today. Achieving this, at the scale of the Open Grid opportunity, demands the most cost-effective and sustainable edge infrastructure. ITRenew build its Sesame open hardware solutions to enable both, making it easy to consistently deploy and manage across diverse locations and topologies. We’re proud to join forces with the other OGA founding members as we seek to evolve what is arguably the common foundation for business growth.”

Ali Fenn, president, ITRenew

Macrometa

“Macrometa’s mission is to make every developer a hero. Our powerful yet simple serverless platform for data intensive and stateful edge applications is finding rapid adoption from cloud developers looking to build real time data driven apps that other Cloud platforms find impossible. Macrometa looks forward to collaborating with the OGA to make the edge a thriving community of fearless innovators, and utopia for cloud developers.”

Chetan Venkatesh, CEO, Macrometa

Masergy

“Masergy is proud to be part of the Open Grid Alliance, building the next generation of the internet that will operate autonomously and predictably at the edge and enable next generation applications for our clients.”

Terry Traina, Chief Technology Officer, Masergy

Menya Solutions

“Menya Solutions – The AI Division of Levio -- is pleased to join the Open Grid Alliance. The Open Grid aligns well with Menya’s vision and mission that places AI at the heart of digital transformation. It is the platform the world will need to provide future Internet services to thousands of interconnected and coordinated sensors, devices, and applications in virtually all sectors of the economy.”

Froduald Kabanza, Chief Technical Advisor, Menya Solutions

Mitacs

“Mitacs is thrilled to be a member of the Open Grid Alliance (OGA). We share the OGA’s goal of driving innovation and look forward to contributing to the realization of its goal of evolving the internet. Using our extensive connections to Canada’s postsecondary institutions and its technology ecosystem, we will foster research collaborations between the academic sector and OGA members and help them capitalize on Canada’s technology strengths, particularly in the areas of future networks, telecoms, 5G, AI, quantum computing, clean technology, and more.”

John Hepburn, CEO and Scientific Director, Mitacs 

MobiledgeX

“A true Open Grid will enable consistency and predictability across multiple clouds and mobile telecom networks with the highest quality of performance. This will make it possible to build next-generation applications and services that leverage the wireless cellular network infrastructure. Telecommunications providers require applications that can scale globally and dynamically across highly distributed networks and infrastructure. The Open Grid Alliance is starting one of the most important industry conversations.”

Jason Hoffman, CEO, MobiledgeX

Nife Labs

"The Power of the Grid comes from the various intersections, interlocks and coordinates. The intersections create resilience against adversity. Every single coordinate plays a significant role. It brings exponential trust, security and even experiences for the world that will become. The Grid, in the same way, unlocks this new world of transformative communication and the internet."

Nida Sahar, founder, Nife Labs

OVA.ai

“Our mission at OVA, in association with the Open Grid Alliance, is to accelerate the democratization and adoption of the metaverse through 5G technology. Our content creation software, StellarX, enables organizations to set up a central metaverse that gives teams space to create and share the work that matters. From creating 3D content, saving custom templates, to all-hands training scenarios, and more.”

Harold Dumar, CEO, OVA.ai

STARaCom

“It is time to reconsider the basic operation of the internet and how data, intelligence and connectivity interact. We are hitting the limits of what current frameworks can achieve; the applications of tomorrow will require the support of the grid of tomorrow.”

Fabrice Labeau, director of operations, STARaCom Research Cluster

University of Sherbrooke

“OGA is a must when considering that every device used by humans down to the smallest and simplest machines will have some form of electronic intelligence and require network access and resources. Thus, we want and need the intelligence, resources and access to be available at the edge of the network for a real decentralized internet with guaranteed interoperability and lightning-fast new technology deployment. UdeS is proud to participate, through OGA, in the definition of the fourth generation Internet.”

Vincent Aimez, Ph.D., vice president, Partnerships and Knowledge Transfer, University of Sherbrooke

ZEDEDA

“ZEDEDA is proud to join the Open Grid Alliance and contribute to building the next generation of the internet. As an edge orchestration company, ZEDEDA is on the front lines of the distributed data explosion and both the challenges and opportunities it is driving. We believe it’s critical to openly collaborate on evolved internet architecture to be able to support, propel, and benefit from new innovation opportunities."

Said Ouissal, CEO and founder, ZEDEDA