Wow. A standards meeting that was anything but standard. The MEF Members Meeting in Miami. Key observations that impact our collective future. The MEF had its quarterly “members meeting” – the smaller working events at which the Board sets direction, technical committees norm, storm and edit, and the MEF members – the real, working, experts – attend and give talks in plenary sessions. I was pleased to attend and present at one of the plenaries, as part of a panel on “Hot Topics in SDWAN and Security” – among my favorite topics. The MEF matters, because it focuses like a laser on real problems I have always observed that in contrast to some industry groups that have more generic charters, the MEF gets real stuff done. I believe this is a clear case of “step #1 in any solution is defining the problem”. The MEF was formed to solve a concrete problem (standardize metro ethernet lines, LANs, ordering and lifecycle ops) and from that clarity came useful outputs, driven by service providers that wanted to speed time-to-revenue, and needed to pass orders efficiently between customers and SPs, as well as between wholesaling and prime contracting SPs. With the SPs motivated, […]