Connecting with Wellington’s tech industry

Victoria University of Wellington is running a workshop aimed at getting Wellington’s tech community up to speed with the latest in network technology.

The two-day workshop, to be held on 18 and 19 February, will give participants an understanding of Software Defined Networking (SDN), an emerging paradigm which allows software to be accessed and changed remotely.

The workshops content has been adapted from a semester long course at Victoria’s School of Engineering and Computer Science.

It is early days for SDN technology, but industry leaders such as Google are already making use of it, citing flexibility and that it creates an environment for innovation as reasons for adopting the technology.

Dr Bryan Ng, an Engineering lecturer at Victoria, is organising and presenting at the workshop. “It used to be that to make a change to how a device worked you had to physically replace the hardware. With SDN, developers are not restricted by the limitations of current hardware.”

Dr Ng says connecting academics and Wellington’s growing technology industry is an important driver for holding the workshop. Presenters and contributors to the workshop include industry representatives from Google, REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd), Pica8 and Catalyst.

“With this workshop we are trying to narrow the gap between industry’s needs and what researchers are doing to meet those needs,” says Dr Ng.

Along with experts in the field, two Victoria students will have the chance to present their work. The pair gained funding through Victoria’s summer scholarship programme to look at specific areas of SDN and will present their findings at the workshop.

Dr Ng says another reason for holding the SDN workshop is to provide people with the skills to enable them to participate in ‘SDN Con’ which takes place in Wellington later in the year.SDN Con will offer developers the opportunity to work in teams to build SDN solutions. The inaugural SDN Con ran successfully in 2014 and it is hoped that with further knowledge of SDN this year’s event will be even bigger.

2015 Wellington SDN Workshop

When: Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19 February 2015

Where: Pipitea Campus, Victoria University

Register: By Friday 13 February, $50 per person

Find out more: http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Events/SDNWorkshop

For more information contact Dr Bryan Ng on 04-463 9998, or bryan.ng@ecs.vuw.ac.nz

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