The MEF is taking the SD-WAN bull by the horns by announcing it will standardize SD-WAN managed services through its Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) framework using open APIs.
The MEF is also working on defining SD-WAN service terminology, components and implementations in order to bring together vendors, orchestration experts and managed service providers.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and Orange (NYSE: FTE) to name a just a few. as well as a large number of competing vendors that are offering their own flavors. According to IDC, the market for SD-WAN managed services is expected to hit $6 billon by 2020.
To date, there hasn't been an industry standard definition for SD-WAN, which the MEF is now addressing through its OpenCS (Open Connectivity Services) SD-WAN Project. The project is drawing a bead on defining six managed use cases and business requirements to ensure that the open LSO APIs can enable orchestration of SD-WAN managed services across multiple service provider and vendor implementations.
"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 MEF CTO Pascal Menezes, in a prepared statement. "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."
Riverbed Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: RVBD) and VeloCloud Networks Inc. are leading the charge for the Open CS project with contributions from Amartus , Cox Communications Inc. , Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. , GBI, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Nokia's Nuage Networks . As new MEF members, Versa Networks and Silver Peak Systems Inc. will also pitch in on the SD-WAN project.
To further define SD-WAN, MEF published a white paper called "Understanding SD-WAN Managed Services: Service Components, MEF LSO Reference Architecture and Use Cases." (See MEF Tackles Defining & Orchestrating SD-WAN Managed Services.)
— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation