When the MEF's GEN 15 kicks off next week in Dallas, I'm eager to finally see, in-person, the tremendous growth that the international Carrier Ethernet services market has undergone over the last year. There are now nearly 3,700 MEF Carrier Ethernet-certified professionals and the industry is on a pace to achieve 3 million retail business service ports by 2018.
Fueling this growth is growing customer demand for end-to-end service assurance, even over multiple operators. To meet this demand, communications services providers (CSPs) are adopting the industry-aligning standards put forth by the MEF around CE 2.0, the Third Network, SDN and NFV, and lifecycle service orchestration (LSO).
LSO, in particular, will help CSPs to achieve superior end-to-end interconnectivity, while integrating service and operations, and delivering real-time, on-demand service availability that is responsive to the demands of the end customer.
Interconnectivity is a central component of Infovista's presentation during the GEN15 Proof-of-Concept (POC) Showcase. Our POC, which we'll present alongside Oracle and Juniper, will demonstrate the dynamic creation, assurance and orchestration of a NaaS-based Carrier Ethernet service with vCPEs and dynamically-scaled vPEs, all across a performance assured multi-operator network. This third evolution of our Zero-touch, Network-as-a-Service solution POC, which was just announced as a finalist for an MEF Excellence Award, builds upon presentations from one year ago at GEN14 and as part of TM Forum's Catalyst initiative.
The POC's core focus is on assuring services across multiple operators and providing a blueprint on how CSPs can transition from today's networks to the MEF's future vision of the Third Network, while continuing to deliver dynamic, assured services. It also shows CSPs how self-service and performance-assured services produce benefits in the form of cost savings and improved quality of service (QoS).
To further build on these points, Infovista will also be speaking on two GEN15 panels exploring best practices in managing LSO and end-to-end CE services.
On November 17, 4-4:45 p.m, I'll be joined by representatives from leading service providers Time Warner Cable, Comcast Business as well as Juniper and ATLANTIC-ACM for the panel, "Creating & Managing Scalable, Assured, Interoperable Wholesale CE 2.0 Services." Additionally, my colleague, Cyril Doussau, will be presenting alongside representatives from SDxCentral, Oracle, WebNMS and MRV Communications on the panel, "How Service Providers Can Achieve Competitive Differentiation By Leveraging LSO To Deliver CE 2.0 & Third Network Services," November 17, 3:10-4 p.m.
GEN15 attendees can expect these panels and the Proof-of-Concept Showcase to show them best practices for overcoming practical challenges related to the Third Network, as well as how to deploy LSO to achieve more cohesive management of end-to-end CE services. This is what customers are demanding from tomorrow's networks, and it's up to the industry to deliver.
We hope you'll join Infovista in Dallas for the upcoming GEN15 conference, November 16-19, where we'll present our POC. Please visit us at Booth #803 or schedule a meeting with one of our experts.
