ECI shows that in cooperation and innovation is the secret
TyN Magazine from MEF18, Los Angeles. Amartus, ECI, Equinix, Liquid Telecom, Sparkle, Spirent, and Tata Communications announced today that the team’s MEF 3.0 Service Fulfillment and Activation Project will demonstrate additional advancements of the MEF 3.0 vision of assured services across automated networks at MEF18 in Los Angeles. The proof of concept is part of a longstanding MEF 3.0 Implementation Project providing end-to-end implementation of the LSO architecture, LSO Sonata APIs, and other LSO APIs across multiple operator domains. Today’s networks are increasingly burdened with supporting emerging technologies and cloud-based applications across service provider ecosystems. But the process of setting up these services to span multiple service provider domains remains complex and time-intensive, often taking many months to complete. This marks the third iteration in an extended project, created to facilitate the activation and assurance of services across multiple service provider domains and establish industry standards to solve this issue. It also incorporates complex services, leveraging both software defined networking (SDN) and network virtualized functions (NFV) across both physical and virtual entities. The proof of concept demonstrates agile service delivery and the automated, assured orchestration of MEF services across four production domains – Tata Communications, Sparkle, Equinix and Liquid. The project successfully aligns with MEF standards and open source work, while supporting interoperability and integration between different orchestration platforms, including both proprietary and open-source (i.e. ONAP).
“We’re proud to participate in yet another successful execution of the MEF vision in our third iteration of the fulfilment and activation Implementation Project,” said Sarit Tager, vice president of R&D, SDN and LSO at ECI. “ECI has been a long-time proponent of advancing the development of LSO standards, and this proof of concept realizes the possibility of orchestration across multiple service provider networks. At MEF18, our team will once again show that global connectivity can be achieved dynamically, contribute to increasingly important enterprise cloud strategies and meet end-user expectations for on-demand agility.” The project also achieved the following innovations:
- Seamless orchestration of multiple technologies, including provider backbone bridging (PBB) and Internet protocol (IP) · End-to-end support of LSO interfaces, including the use of published interfaces (LSO Sonata, LSO Presto) with as yet non-published interfaces (LSO Cantata, LSO Legato) · The POC demonstrates interoperability among different entities, across multiple business applications and orchestration systems, including proprietary and open source environments (such as ONAP)
- Combination of SDN and NFV technologies (connectivity and virtual entities) across multiple technologies and vendors
- The POC supports various scenarios of service activation and validation
“This MEF18 proof of concept fortifies the MEF vision of accelerating worldwide adoption of assured services orchestrated across a global ecosystem of automated networks, leveraging standardized LSO APIs,” said Pascal Menezes, MEF CTO. “Our goal is to enable service providers to transition from operating as independent islands of excellence to being integral players in a worldwide business federation of cloud-like networks that support dynamic services across multiple providers. The MEF 3.0 Service Fulfillment and Activation Project brings together innovative industry leaders to see these ideas come to life, and is a great example of industry support for emerging LSO Sonata and other LSO APIs.”
