MEF and ONAP Collaborate to Advance Agile, Assured, and Orchestrated Services Over Automated Networks

Relationship brings open source and standards together to further shared vision for service orchestration across multiple providers and technology domains

SDN NFV World Congress 2017 – The Hague, Netherlands, 11 October 2017 – MEF and the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), a Linux Foundation Project, today announced their joint collaboration to accelerate the rollout of agile, assured, and orchestrated services across automated, virtualized, and interconnected networks.  Service providers, cloud providers, and enterprises are challenged to provide on-demand services profitably and competitively, while maximizing existing investments. Together, MEF and ONAP will leverage the resources of their more than 250 combined member companies to speed open source-based SDN/NFV and LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) innovation that will power a new generation of dynamic network services optimized for the digital economy.

As part of this collaboration, MEF is now an associate member of both ONAP and The Linux Foundation, and The Linux Foundation is an auditing member of MEF. The organizations will jointly facilitate development of an LSO Framework and the creation of standardized open LSO APIs designed to automate the entire lifecycle for services orchestrated across multiple provider networks and multiple network technology domains. These efforts will be supported by LSO Hackathons at MEF17 and several MEF-hosted events in 2018 that will enable open source community developers and networking professionals to develop LSO-SDN-NFV based solutions that can be used in open source projects and in development of MEF LSO API specifications.

The collaboration between MEF and ONAP extends the work that MEF is already undertaking with The Linux Foundation’s OpenDaylight (ODL) and Platform for Network Data Analytics (PNDA) Projects. More details on collaborative initiatives will be shared in coming months.

“ONAP was formed with the understanding that the creation of a comprehensive framework for real-time, policy-driven software automation of virtual network functions could best be achieved by sharing and combining industry resources,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager of Networking & Orchestration, The Linux Foundation. “As part of this vision, The Linux Foundation is integrating our open networking initiatives more closely with industry associations like MEF. MEF and ONAP hold a common vision for the end-to-end automation of service provider networks. We are pleased to work with them to combine resources and minimize fragmentation to accelerate the transformation and automation of networks with SDN and NFV.”

“MEF is delighted to work with The Linux Foundation’s ONAP Project on a common goal of advancing orchestration of dynamic services that provide unprecedented user and application-directed control over network resources and service capabilities,” said Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF. “We see great value in harmonizing open source and open standards work to speed development of open LSO APIs and realize their implementation as quickly as possible.”

SDN NFV World Congress 2017

Executives from MEF and The Linux Foundation will be speaking at the SDN NFV World Congress.

Pascal Menezes, MEF, will give a presentation titled “SD-WAN Managed Services and MEF Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO)” at 5:00pm on Tuesday, 10 October.

Arpit Joshipura, The Linux Foundation, will give a presentation titled “ONAP Project Overview & Update” at 2:05pm on Thursday, 12 October.

Dan Pitt, SVP, MEF, is chairing a MEF Workshop titled “Lifecycle Service Orchestration: From Specification to Implementation” that will be held 11:10am – 12:40pm on Friday, 13 October.

MEF17

MEF and ONAP will provide updates on collaboration activities during MEF Workshop and other presentations at the MEF17 event, to be held 13-16 November in Orlando, Florida.

Arpit Joshipura will give a presentation at 8:15am on Wednesday, 15 November and offer his industry perspective on the impact of open source networking.

See the MEF17 agenda for more details.

Participate in Joint Work

To learn more and to participate in the joint work of ONAP and MEF, join the ONAP Technical Steering Committee or contact coordinator@mef.net at MEF.

About MEF

An industry association of 210+ member companies, MEF is enabling service providers to create a global ecosystem of networks that deliver agile, assured, and orchestrated services for the digital economy and hyper-connected world. These services provide an on-demand, cloud-centric experience with user- and application-directed control over network resources and service capabilities. They are delivered over automated, virtualized, and interconnected networks powered by LSO, SDN, and NFV. MEF produces LSO frameworks, open LSO APIs, software-driven reference implementations, service specifications, and certification programs. MEF’s work will enable automated delivery of standardized wavelength, Carrier Ethernet, IP, SD-WAN, and Layer 4-7 services across multiple provider networks. For more information: https://www.mef.net.

About the Open Network Automation Platform

The Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project brings together top global carriers and vendors with the goal of allowing end users to automate, design, orchestrate and manage services and virtual functions. ONAP unites two major open networking and orchestration projects, open source ECOMP and the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O), with the mission of creating a unified architecture and implementation and supporting collaboration across the open source community. The ONAP Project is a Linux Foundation project. For more information, visit https://www.onap.org.

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Media Contacts

Ashley Schulte
Witz Communications for MEF

919-435-9112
ashley@witzcommunications.com

Sarah Conway

The Linux Foundation

(978) 578-5300

sconway@linuxfoundation.org