The MEF, formerly the Metro Ethernet Forum, has announced that it is extending its work in an attempt to standardise managed services on software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN).
It will define SD-WAN service terminology, components and implementations utilising MEF’s LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration), Reference Architecture and Framework. This work will ensure the consistency of performance, policy and security of SD-WAN services across multiple provider networks, leveraging open LSO APIs.
“Businesses are demanding WAN flexibility to control costs as they migrate applications to the cloud and see SD-WAN as an option to address this,” said Pascal Menezes, CTO at MEF.
“To meet these demands and remain competitive, service providers are looking to integrate SD-WAN into a portfolio of orchestrated services delivered in a seamless, automated fashion. MEF is uniquely positioned to bring together managed service providers (MSPs), orchestration experts, and SD-WAN vendors to address this challenge and accelerate SD-WAN managed service deployments on behalf of the enterprises.”
MEF has already established an OpenCS SD-WAN project which is led by Riverbed and VeloCloud and includes contributions from a number of vendors including Amartus, Cox, Fujitsu Network Communications, GBI, Huawei, Nokia’s Nuage, Silver Peak and Versa Networks.
The project is focused on providing use cases and business requirements to ensure that providers and vendors can implement SD-WAN managed services using open standard LSO API’s. The first six major SD-WAN managed services use cases have been agreed on by the MEF community.
“MEF’s OpenCS SD-WAN project is empowering the service provider community with vendor-neutral models for optimally delivering applications over real world software-defined infrastructure,” said Joe Ruffles, global standards architect at Riverbed.
In addition, the project will also deliver a rich set of LSO APIs to enable consistent SD-WAN assurance, application performance, and security policies, which include telemetry data feeding back into LSO analytic platforms for various AI automated use cases.
“Our OpenCS SD-WAN project will enable integration of managed SD-WAN services in multi-service environments with seamless interoperability between different orchestrated services,” said Tim Van Herck, director of technical marketing at VeloCloud Networks.
“This will further accelerate deployment by providers and adoption by enterprise clients.”
