SAN FRANCISCO -- The OpenDaylight Project, the networking industry's largest open source project focused on Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced that Tencent, a leading provider of Internet value added services in China, has joined the project at the Silver level.

"Tencent's network infrastructure is expanding to accommodate a growing user base and the massive scale required to provide those users with high quality services. Traditional ways of designing and operating a network of this scale cannot satisfy businesses and operational requirements, so innovative new solutions are needed," said Tom Bie, VP of Technology and Engineering Group at Tencent. "Through partnerships with suppliers and developers in the OpenDaylight project, we have begun developing and rolling out SDN solutions to improve network efficiency and service quality, not just for ourselves but for the Internet at large. Tencent's experts will continue to apply SDN technology in production networks and will share our experiences and expertise with the wider community. Together, we believe we can create an open, healthy ecosystem to benefit all parties."

Tencent has built a robust SDN infrastructure to use network resources efficiently, effectively and to improve Data Center Interconnection, Internet Connection and Data Center networking. Tencent participates in the OpenDaylight project to nurture the growth of its feature-rich, high-performance SDN service that provides better Internet service to its users, while also sharing valuable insights and contributions with the broader community.

"With millions of users, Tencent has a considerable need to maximize networking efficiency and capacity. To that end, they have developed an extremely innovative approach to SDN, which is built and deployed on OpenDaylight," said Neela Jacques, executive director, OpenDaylight. "It's wonderful to see such strong engagement from an organization running some of the world's most demanding networks. OpenDaylight is proud to welcome Tencent as the newest OpenDaylight member."

OpenDaylight is seeing significant traction in China both through membership and community growth. In January, OpenDaylight participated in a Community Day at an OpenDaylight Bootcamp and Hackathon event in Shenzhen hosted by the China Open SDN (COS) committee--which includes leaders from major Chinese Internet companies, service providers and networking equipment manufacturers. The event gathered almost 300 industry professionals and university students to collaborate and share knowledge of the OpenDaylight platform. The COS also hosts OpenDaylight User Groups in five cities across China.

OpenDaylight will co-host a joint Open Source Networking track with the OPNFV project as part of the China SDN and NFV Conference on April 12-13, 2016, in Beijing. During the conference, OpenDaylight Advisory Group member Wade Shao, principal engineer for Tencent's Network Platform department, will give a presentation on ODL at scale in the data center. Please visit https://www.opendaylight.org/events/2016-04-12-000000-2016-04-13-000000/china-sdn-nfv-conferencefor more details.

About Tencent
Tencent's diversified services include QQ, Weixin/ WeChat for communications; Qzone for social networking; QQ Game Platform for online games; QQ.com and Tencent News for information and Tencent Video for video content.

Tencent was founded in Shenzhen in 1998 and went public on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004. The Company is one of the constituent stocks of the Hang Seng Index. Tencent seeks to evolve with the Internet by investing in innovation, providing a mutually beneficial environment for partners, and staying close to users.

Tencent Inc.