MEF17 – A Recap

MEF17, the world’s premier networking opportunity for communication professionals, received more than 1,000 attendees from 275+ companies and 35+ countriesat the Loews Sapphire Falls Resort in Orlando, Florida. All of them gathered to reshape the communications landscape by focusing on Third Network connectivity and cloud services for the digital economy and the hyper-connected world.

MEF17 topics

• Third Network Service Migration. MEF17 provided practical strategies and general roadmaps for the migration from static connectivity services to new orchestrated Layer 1-3 connectivity and orchestrated Layer 4-7 cloud services (e.g., NFV-based virtual security, etc.). The conference offered compelling content for service providers despite their size or the current state of their service portfolios.
• LSO & Open API Development. There is widespread industry support for standardized, open APIs that can orchestrate services across multiple provider networks within a single provider network. Those who attended MEF16 ranked LSO development and deployment as their No. 1 topic of interest for 2017. Therefore, this year’s edition addressed the issue considerably, taking into account all aspects of LSO, including how orchestration solutions work hand-in-hand with SDN and NFV.
• Open Initiatives and Industry Collaboration. Third Network services development requires an extensive collaboration of industry standards organizations, open source projects, and service and technology companies due to the considerable complexities involved.

MEF17 proved what’s been resonating in the industry for a while now: The time for virtualization is now. Read our CTO for North America thoughts in his blog post: Virtualization for Cable Operators – The How, Where, and When

New Certification Program: MEF 3.0

MEF unveiled a new certification program designed to help its members better understand and implement SDN and NFV.

MEF 3.0 is designed to implement MEF’s Third Network vision and strategy that was announced several years ago. MEF CTO Pascal Menezes said the Third Network vision included telcos becoming “more cloud-like or cloud-native” to help drive their digital transformations.

MEF 3.0 addresses orchestration of a variety of services, from Layer 1 optical wavelengths up to Layer 3 IP services, in addition to Ethernet, MEF Chief Operating Officer Kevin Vachon said in an opening workshop session. And unlike the previous MEF 1.0 and 2.0 specification certification processes, MEF 3.0 certification will be offered as a subscription service.

“What is fundamentally different is that we are moving to an incremental release framework,” Vachon said, adding that the intention is to speed up both product releases by vendors and services by network operators.

MEF 3.0 has four fundamental parts:

1. Open Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) APIs
2. New network-based services
3. Certification
4. Community

MEF is coordinating the development of APIs that can play a crucial role in allowing inter-carrier automation.

The most significant change is the standardization of LSO APIs to translate subscriber intent to service realization, spanning service ordering, fulfillment, performance, usage, analytics, and security.

The event was eye-opening for many: The time for virtualization is now.

If you are considering virtualization for your organization, you should check out our North America CTO’s answers for 3 key questions on virtualization: how, when, and where.