A number of major IT end users and service providers and a large group of vendors have formed a new nonprofit organization that aims at promoting a new open networking standard and approach to network management called Software-Defined Networking.

Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon and Yahoo! were joined by 17 vendors, including major equipment, networking, virtualization and chip companies as initial members of the Open Networking Foundation.

The foundation said it believed there was a need for faster innovation in network technology. SDN would give owners and operator better control over their networks, allowing to optimize network behavior to serve their customers, "through relatively simple software changes.

Urs Hoelzle, senior VP of engineering at Google and ONF president and chairman of the board, said SDN would accelerate network evolution and improvement. "Over time, we expect SDN will help networks become both more secure and more reliable."

SDN's two essential components are a software interface called OpenFlow for controlling the way packets are forwarded through switches and a set of global management interfaces upon which more advanced management tools can be built.

The approach came out of a six-year research collaboration between Stanford University and University of California Berkeley.

ONF says SDN will enable innovation in many kinds of networks, including data center net5works, wide area telecommunication networks, wireless networks, enterprise networks and networks in homes.

In data centers SDN can be used to reduce energy use by powering down some routers during off-peak periods.

ONF will begin by focusing on adoption and ongoing development of the OpenFlow standard. It will be licensed free of charge to all member companies. The foundation's next task will be to define global management interfaces.