Coriant partners MEF on LSO service orchestration standards
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Coriant partners MEF on LSO service orchestration standards

Coriant has collaborated with the MEF to develop two new specifications that advance the orchestration of MEF 3.0 connectivity services across various technologies.

The new standards called the Network Resource Management: Information Model (MEF 59) and Network Resource Provisioning: Interface Profile Specification (MEF 60) were developed within the MEF’s Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) reference architecture, for which Coriant is the leading contributor for both standards.

Speaking about the two new standards, Felipe Caetano, vice president of product management at Coriant, said: “Simplifying the resource provisioning across multiple technology domains is one of the key operational challenges our customers face as they evolve their networks to support new services. The publication of these standardized MEF 3.0 LSO APIs represents an important milestone that will help accelerate the delivery of agile, assured, and orchestrated services over automated networks powered by LSO, SDN and NFV.”

The MEF’s LSO Reference Architecture allows the development of the models, processes, tools, and APIs that enable orchestration of MEF 3.0 services like Layer 1, Carrier Ethernet, IP, and SD-WAN, across multiple providers and various network technologies. The LSO Reference Architecture allows enables service modelling to cover a range of operational, orchestration, and network management behaviours, including SDN and NFV.

As a result MEF 59 supports the LSO Reference Architecture by defining the information model to allow the orchestration of Carrier Ethernet connectivity services through WAN SDN controllers, OTN sub-network managers, and legacy network management systems. While MEF 60 offers an intent-based solution for the activation of network resources in support of MEF-defined services.

Another milestone in the development of industry standards came in March with the live demonstration of two-way inter-carrier software-defined network (SDN) orchestration by Colt and Verizon. During the showcase the two companies where able to make real-time bandwidth changes in each other’s networks through an Equinix interconnect. The trial marks the first time two-way network orchestration between carrier production networks has ever been showcased in the world, making it the first step towards enabling real-time cross-carrier automation.

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