Gaining force every day, there’s a shared vision in the telecommunications industry where standardized solutions will work together to enable on-demand connectivity and NFV-based services. A future where network providers and equipment manufactures work across multiple network technology domains as well as multiple interconnected cloud and service providers.
This goal is an ambitious one, and for it to work requires the expertise and collaboration of many diverse organizations. No single company can accomplish this task alone.
“Worldwide industry momentum is building in favor of agile, assured, and orchestrated services delivered over automated, virtualized, and interconnected networks,” recently commented Pascal Menezes, CTO of MEF, the organization enabling agile, assured Third Network services.
“We must have standardized open APIs within a generally agreed-upon orchestration framework to make this happen,” Menezes continued. “This applies both between service providers to enable ‘East-West’ automation of interconnectivity, as well as within service provider domains ‘North-South’ to maximize agile use of different technology domains. Timely creation of API standards requires a more agile development model in which we realize specifications in code quickly, test things out in reference implementations and provide a feedback loop for further specification development.”
How can your business become part of this revolutionary effort?
One way you can participate in moving the needle is at the upcoming MEF16 global networking conference, taking place November 7-10 at the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor Hotel in Baltimore/Washington, D.C. Recently, it was announced that MEF16 will host the UNITE Partner Summit, bringing together key industry stakeholders who are working together to drive the development of this new era in telecommunications.
At the UNITE Partners Summit you will find leaders from prominent standards organizations (SDOs), MEF member companies and open source projects. The purpose of the summit is to encourage collaboration and to align market implementations for open and closed source solutions with MEF’s emerging and published LSO and connectivity services specifications.
At the UNITE Partners Summit, you will find top experts from such organizations as OpenDaylight, ON.Lab, OPEN-O, OPNFV, TM Forum, ETSI-NFV, Ericsson, ECI and Cisco. Many more companies will be on hand as well.
“Realizing the ambitious vision of on-demand orchestrated services across many technology domains and multiple service providers requires SDOs, open source projects, service providers, and technology companies to embrace new ways of working together that leverage the power of software within an open networking environment,” explained MEF President Nan Chen. “We are excited to bring this leadership community together to accelerate innovation.”
In addition to the UNITE Partner Summit, you will find much more at MEF16, including the highly-anticipated Proof of Concept Showcase and LSO Hackathon. The event will also host the MEF Excellence Awards Dinner, as well as workshops on LSO, MEF Certification Programs, Open Initiatives and Wholesale Services & Interconnection.
To register for MEF16, click here.