SD-WAN

PCCW Global’s managed SD-WAN service is available in 80 countries and provides our customers with intelligent path selection on a dynamic high-speed underlay of IP-MPLS, Global Internet Access (GIA) and broadband connections. We are proud to be among the first few service providers in the world to be certified for MEF 3.0 SD-WAN services and applaud MEF for their efforts in setting up the first industry-wide SD-WAN standard (MEF 70). Our enterprise and wholesale customers embarking on their digital transformation journey can therefore expect better interoperability and improved application performance across disparate service providers’ domains.

Frederick Chui

Chief Commercial Officer, PCCW Global

(MEF PR, March 2020)

We are proud that Spectrum Enterprise is one of the first MEF-certified SD-WAN service providers because it demonstrates our commitment to industry standards and innovation. As wide area networks evolve, enterprises can confidently partner with Spectrum Enterprise to guide them on their WAN journey and match the right SD-WAN design and access service to the client’s specific network needs and at the client’s preferred pace.

Satya Parimi

Group Vice President, Data Products, Spectrum Enterprise

(MEF PR, March 2020)

Telia is proud to be one of the first service providers to have successfully achieved the MEF 3.0 SD-WAN certification milestone. We view our MEF 3.0 certification as a key step in addressing the requirements of our enterprise customers. Certification is especially important for helping customers simplify the process of selecting a service provider that is committed to standardized global services. SD-WAN has become an essential part of Telia’s managed services portfolio to accelerate our customers’ digital transformation journey.

Tomi Airola

Head of Business Networking, Telia Company

(MEF PR, March 2020)

The MEF 3.0 certification underscores Vodacom Business’s commitment to being a technology and standards leader which improves the quality, management and interoperability of Ethernet and IP services for all our clients across the continent. The accolade highlights that indeed Vodacom Business offers best in class SD-WAN service offerings.

Marten Scheffer

Managing Executive for Enterprise Technology and FTTX, Vodacom Business

(Vodacom Business PR, October 2020)

We’re seeing a significant change in how customers are using SD-WAN now versus two years ago, and that evolution is what makes service standards from MEF so critical. Today, and moving forward, SD-WAN is about delivering application performance. As the underlying networks—Optical Transport, Carrier Ethernet, and IP—are under greater pressure to be more ubiquitous, easy to provision, on-demand and elastic, that is where the MEF 3.0 construct comes into play. MEF’s role is creating a standards-based, intelligent network across multiple carriers that will eliminate friction as we work with each other to deliver application performance at the level of efficiency our customers are seeking.

Roman Pacewicz

Chief Product Officer , AT&T Business (formerly)

(MEF PR, August 2019)

The MEF 70 standard sets the foundation for the adoption of common SD-WAN service attributes between service providers. The definition of a common standard for SD-WAN services will allow the industry to coordinate and align on the technology development. It will enable us to build end-to-end services across disparate service providers’ domains and serve our global customer needs.

Mirko Voltolini

Global Head of Network of Demand, Colt Technology Services

(MEF PR, May 2019)

Orange Business Services is very pleased to support the first MEF SD-WAN standard. Our customers are expecting agile and application-driven network services and we believe that this new standard will facilitate the adoption and deployment of SD-WAN to meet their expectations. We look forward to working with MEF on ongoing initiatives to develop the interoperability of SD-WAN solutions and to define standardized APIs that will allow us to integrate SD-WAN in a simplified and fully secured end-to-end orchestration model, from the end user to the applications.

Laurent Perrin

Head of Application Driven Networks, Orange Business Services

(MEF PR, October 2018)

Verizon is pleased to support MEF’s industry-leading SD-WAN standardization work. SD-WAN is the way to interface policy with an intelligent software defined network, and standardization makes it easier for integration to work across multiple types of underlying transport services. What that means for our end-customers is it lets them get a better overall experience relative to their applications, with support for a broader range of use cases, guaranteed service resiliency, and improved service capabilities in an always on, always connected world.

Shawn Hakl

Senior Vice President Business Products, Verizon (formerly)

(MEF PR, August 2019)

Customers are embracing SD-WAN to improve network performance, obtain affordable and reliable connectivity to cloud applications, and gain greater visibility and control over network services. MEF’s SD-WAN service standardization will benefit all industry stakeholders by eliminating confusion regarding SD-WAN service components, core capabilities, and concepts. Standardization will also enable service and technology providers to focus on providing a core set of common capabilities and then building on that for differentiated offerings, helping ensure maximum flexibility for customers.

Michael Strople

President, Allstream

(MEF PR, May 2019)

SD-WAN services are transformative and have raised the expectations for network services. They enable subscribers to focus on application performance and visibility and apply policies to regulate compliance based on business importance and security. SD-WAN services also facilitate and accelerate an enterprise’s multi-cloud digital transformation. The MEF 70 standard is the commencement of several MEF SD-WAN projects that I anticipate will simplify operations and accelerate the time to sell, deploy, and support SD-WAN services.

Ralph Santitoro

Head of Digital Services, Fujitsu Network Communications

(MEF PR, May 2019)

Combining standardized SD-WAN services with dynamic high-speed underlay connectivity services—including Carrier Ethernet, Optical Transport, and IP—enables service providers to deliver powerful MEF 3.0 hybrid networking solutions with unprecedented user- and application-directed control over network resources and service capabilities.

Nan Chen

President, MEF

(MEF PR, August 2019)

MEF has a proven track record of standardizing abstract constructs, attributes, and architectures for network services such as SD-WAN, Carrier Ethernet, Optical Transport, and IP. By achieving consensus on what a converged networking and security framework and associated SASE services should look like, MEF can empower technology and service providers to focus on providing a core set of common capabilities and then building their own innovative, differentiated offerings beyond those core features.

Nan Chen

President, MEF

(MEF PR, August 2020)

The SASE concept adjusts for a fundamental change in how enterprise users access business systems and the associated increased demand for lower-latency edge compute capabilities closer to the user. The well-defined and static network edge of the past is being replaced by more users working outside corporate walls and accessing business systems beyond corporate data centers. SASE shifts the focus from site-centric to user-centric security. The user can be anything (human, IoT, etc.) and anywhere, and security and network functions can be distributed away from the enterprise data center to maximize the availability of high performance edges (e.g. PoPs) and security clouds.

Pascal Menezes

CTO, MEF

(MEF PR, August 2020)

Demand for SD-WAN is growing rapidly in all market segments and geographies, and there is strong momentum for it to be delivered as a managed service. The availability of the MEF 3.0 SD-WAN technology vendor certification is an important step in providing enterprises an industry benchmark for vendor selection and Nuage Networks from Nokia is proud to demonstrate its SD-WAN market leadership as a member of the first group to achieve this certification milestone.

Sunil Khandekar

Head of Nuage Networks, Nokia

(MEF PR, January 2020)

SD-WAN has become a key part of the managed services portfolio of service providers globally in order to accelerate their enterprise customers’ digital transformation journey. With more than 60 percent of enterprises projected to deploy SD-WAN over the next two to four years, service providers needed to come together and establish standards, to help enterprises understand what they are buying and evaluate different solutions to accelerate services across automated networks. We congratulate MEF in taking a leadership role and are pleased to demonstrate our commitment to the standards by achieving MEF 3.0 SD-WAN certification.

Kumar Mehta

Co-founder and CDO, Versa Networks

(MEF PR, January 2020)

MEF and its members continue to be at the forefront of driving industry standardization, collaboration, and innovation across leading technologies. Versa is excited to be participating in the MEF SASE initiative and sharing our expertise based on Versa SASE enabling businesses and organizations to deliver, enforce, and monitor networking and security in the cloud and on-premises for comprehensive security, application performance, multi-cloud connectivity, and consistent policy.

Apurva Mehta

Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Versa Networks

(MEF PR, August 2020)

Infovista is proud to have successfully completed the MEF 3.0 SD-WAN certification. We view our MEF 3.0 certification as a key milestone in addressing the requirements of both service providers and enterprises. We believe that it will help SD-WAN users in selecting a vendor that is committed to a market model that provides service consistency and interoperability.

Mike Wilkinson

CPO, Infovista

(MEF PR, January 2020)

Spirent joins MEF in congratulating Comcast Business, PCCW Global, Spectrum Enterprise, and Telia Company in attaining the first MEF SD-WAN service certifications. By participating in the pilot, the four leading SD-WAN MSPs validated and enhanced the industry’s first SD-WAN Certification Program, building upon the three initial pilot SD-WAN product certifications announced in January. We are proud to contribute as the neutral SD-WAN testing/validation/assurance authority.

Marc Cohn

Head of Virtualization, Spirent

(MEF PR, March 2020)

These first MEF 3.0 SD-WAN certifications achieved by Comcast Business, PCCW Global, Spectrum Enterprise, and Telia Company are very important. This signifies that MEF 3.0 certification is a new competitive differentiator for SD-WAN service providers, as well as the benchmark for assuring compliance with globally recognized SD-WAN specifications. Our research shows a direct relationship between a commitment to MEF certification and the business success of market leading companies. We anticipate similar results for MEF 3.0 SD-WAN certification.

Rosemary Cochran

Principal and Co-Founder, Vertical Systems Group

(MEF PR, March 2020)

Enterprises are swiftly expanding their digital workforces, increasing the number of users, devices, and services touching their network. As a result, the attack surfaces of their networks are enlarged, increasing exposure to malicious attacks across cloud and on-prem environments. Service providers’ ability to offer secure enterprise connectivity services is essential to boosting the value of their evolving cloud-based offerings. There are many SASE attributes that, once standardized on the basis of MEF SASE Services, will create a strong foundation to deliver innovative security services and solutions that enterprises will value in meeting their unified network and security business objectives.

Ron Westfall

Research Director and Senior Analyst, Futurum Research

(MEF PR, August 2020)

The momentum of SD-WAN adoption, along with the large and ever-growing community of players in the SD-WAN ecosystem—vendors, service providers and enterprises—has created an information vacuum, in terms of how we deploy SD-WAN over multiple underlay connectivity services and across multiple service provider networks. The MEF SD-WAN standard is the first step to addressing this vacuum with a common language by which we can define SD-WAN services and service attributes. This, and the MEF follow-on SD-WAN standards, are the building blocks leading to a MEF SD-WAN certification process, which enterprise SD-WAN customers will need as they evaluate and deploy SD-WAN services.

Jennifer Clark

Principal Analyst, Heavy Reading

(MEF PR, August 2019)

Our WAN Manager Survey indicates that, in 2018, fewer than 1/5th of enterprises had already installed SD-WAN and 1/3 were still researching their SD-WAN options. With dozens of potential suppliers to choose from—from technology start-ups to large SD-WAN-managed service providers—WAN managers will benefit from the standards MEF has worked to create in this space.

Greg Bryan

Senior Manager - Enterprise Research, TeleGeography

(MEF PR, May 2019)