Masahisa Kawashima, Technology Working Group Chair at IOWN Global Forum, presented at OCP Global Summit 2025 the forum's approach to bridging the bandwidth and efficiency gap between cloud infrastructure and the rest of the world (edges and wide-area networks). He outlined IOWN's three-layer co-evolution framework — Open All-Photonic Network, Deterministic Networking, and multi-site accelerated computing — and proposed a formal collaboration with OCP across edge-cloud convergence, distributed data centers, and open AI infrastructure with optical interconnects. With 168 members as of July 2025 and approximately 40% outside Japan, IOWN Global Forum seeks OCP as the product specification and implementer engagement venue while IOWN drives functional architecture and early adopter engagement across vertical industries.

Key Takeaways

• The fundamental problem IOWN targets is that cloud innovation (faster compute, new protocols, RDMA) does not reach edges and WANs due to an optical transport layer that is sparse, semi-static, and limited bandwidth — with edges hosting the enterprise customers who pay for cloud services.
• IOWN's three-layer co-evolution stack — Open APN (capillarized photonic transport), Deterministic Network (hub-and-spoke packet forwarding with QoS), and Data-Centric Infrastructure (multi-site accelerated computing with RDMA) — is designed to make edges and clouds one seamless computing zone.
• Open APN's economic model shifts DWDM transceivers and transponders from infrastructure provider assets to customer facilities (CPE/APN-T), reducing infrastructure CAPEX while optical components remain usable across transceiver generations.
• Open APN disaggregates today's ROADM-based optical systems into three distributed tiers — APN-S (Splitter), APN-G (Gate), APN-I (Interchange) — controlled by an SDN controller and made simulatable via the "network digital design" work item.
• IOWN's AI interconnect work item targets scale-up and scale-out using co-packaged optics combined with optical circuit switches; IOWN argues CPO in existing leaf-spine packet networks cannot reach its full potential without OCS.
• OCP's newly launched OCS subgroup is identified as a natural complement to IOWN's AI interconnect work item, with a proposed collaboration model: IOWN develops functional architecture and vertical use cases; OCP develops product specifications and engages implementers.
• IOWN Forum had 168 members (37 sponsor, 110 general, 21 academic/research) as of July 24, 2025, with ~40% outside Japan; sponsor members include Toyota, Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Morgan Stanley, and Accenture alongside technology companies.
• The call to action is a joint fit-and-gap analysis and roadmap between OCP and IOWN for three areas: edge-cloud convergence, distributed data centers, and open AI infrastructure with optical interconnects.