MEF is turning its focus to Network-as-a-Service, and in early October 2023 held its first large industry event since Covid – the “Global NaaS Event”, at Texas Live! In the Dallas Area. No baseball, alas, but a terrific lineup of participants and speakers – with C-level as well as deep experts from Verizon, AT&T, Lumen, Console Connect/PCCW, Colt, Comcast, Deutche Telekom, Orange, Sparkle, TIM, Telstra, NTT – and a similar cast of software suppliers including ServiceNow, Netcracker Technology, Spirent, Microsoft (Azure) along with dozens of specialists helping to drive this project forward – aaS API operators, exchanges, test vendors and more. Interestingly, a growing number of large enterprise CI/TOs attended to provide a voice of the customer. This event spanned three days, Monday Oct 2nd through Wednesday evening Oct 4th and included main speaking/panel tracks, technical committee meetings, a demo/accelerator area, and extensive time and places for networking. NaaS: a business strategy NaaS was the central focus – and despite numerous competing definitions, MEF now has its own, though with a spirited discussion about the relative importance of “on-demand” connectivity vs enabling an automated ecosystem. For MEF, one version of such an ecosystem is between service provider peers, rather than […]