MEF Expands Reach to Cover Cloud Applications with IMTC Integration

MEF’s Applications Committee is addressing the challenges and opportunities of the growing cloud-centric applications market

Los Angeles, 28 November 2017 – MEF, the driving force enabling agile, assured, and orchestrated services, is integrating the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) into its new Applications Committee, which began formal work in October. MEF CTO Pascal Menezes currently is leading the committee, with co-chairs to be selected in the coming months. As part of this transaction, all assets of IMTC will be transferred to MEF and active work will be carried on within MEF. IMTC member companies that are not already members of MEF will become MEF principal members.

“As more and more enterprises move their applications to the cloud, there is a need to ensure that cloud applications deliver a high-quality, frictionless end-user experience,” said Nan Chen, President, MEF. “We consider this expansion of our scope of work a natural extension of our MEF 3.0 transformational service framework enabling agile, assured, and orchestrated services across a global ecosystem of automated networks.”

The objective of the Applications Committee is to ultimately enable cloud applications to dynamically interact with the network via MEF’s LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) framework using a set of machine-to-machine APIs. This thereby ensures that application-level quality of experience, security, and performance requirements can be met by the underlying network infrastructure using LSO Artificial Intelligence analytics and automation without human intervention.

MEF’s applications work will be closely aligned with the focus of MEF 3.0:

·  Agile – Enable networks to be programmed by cloud applications for a given set of autonomic behaviours such that control, visibility, and performance guarantees can be realized in an on-demand and almost real-time manner.

·  Assured – Enable networks to deliver on cloud application performance objectives, availability, security, and middle box interoperability using automation principles.

·  Orchestrated – Enable networks that are inter-connected from device-to-the-cloud to be orchestrated, automated, and coordinated for a given set of network connectivity, service, and performance objectives.

“IMTC’s mission was to promote and facilitate the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunications products and services based on open standards, and the MEF’s infrastructure and industry leadership made it the logical home for this work moving forward,” said Anatoli Levine, President, IMTC and Director of Products and Standards for Softil Ltd. “We’re excited to work closely with the network operator community and broader ecosystem to ensure seamless integration of cloud-centric applications in modern service infrastructures. IMTC members are also looking forward to enhancing the content of IMTC’s annual flagship SuperOp interoperability testing event by utilizing MEF LSO APIs to dynamically control interaction of multimedia applications with the delivery network.”

“With our new Applications Committee, we’re tackling some of the most complex and fundamental issues facing our industry today,” said Menezes. “This is an exciting time for MEF as we expand the range and reach of our work to encompass the application layer of the network, bring in new members, and help shape the structure of next-generation networks.”

The Applications Committee is incorporating active work of IMTC, including that of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Real-Time Media (RTM SDN) working groups and other work areas (see imtc.org for additional information about IMTC). Application sub-groups will deliver various automation use cases, building upon those already published by IMTC. In addition, to support a higher level of abstraction interaction between applications and networks, an Intent Work Area initially will start under the Applications Committee to collaboratively develop a common, multi-vendor, interoperable, intent-based set of LSO APIs, enabling networks to be treated as a programmable abstraction layer comprised of a closed-loop, black box model.

About MEF

An industry association of 210+ member companies, MEF recently introduced the MEF 3.0 transformational global services framework for defining, delivering, and certifying agile, assured, and orchestrated services over a global ecosystem of automated networks. MEF 3.0 services are designed to provide an on-demand, cloud-centric experience with user- and application-directed control over network resources and service capabilities. MEF 3.0 services are delivered over automated, virtualized, and interconnected networks powered by LSO, SDN, and NFV. MEF produces service specifications, LSO frameworks, open LSO APIs, software-driven reference implementations, and certification programs. MEF 3.0 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.

Additional resources:

·  MEF Releases MEF 3.0 Transformational Global Services Framework

·  MEF 3.0 Overview

·  MEF 3.0 Launch Video

Media Contact:
Ashley Schulte

Witz Communications for MEF

About IMTC

The IMTC was an industry-leading, non-profit organization whose mission was to promote and facilitate the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunication products and services based on open international standards. The IMTC hosted interoperability testing events and demonstrations throughout the world, including events to test WebRTC, IoT, SDN, IMS, VoLTE, SIP, H.323, TIP, and many other Voice over IP products and services. The IMTC Board of Directors included representatives from Cisco, LifeSize Communications, Polycom, Qualcomm, Softil, Unify and Vidyo. The IMTC focused on making “Rich Media happen Anywhere, Anytime.”