PARIS, May 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – The MEF, a global network of industry, cloud, and technology providers that accelerate enterprise digital transformation, today at its member quarterly meeting in Paris, France , has announced the launch of a Technology Advisory Board (TAB). Composed of senior executives from leading global technology companies, TAB leverages the leadership and expertise of MEF’s world-class board of directors and brings important technology provider insights to MEF’s strategic work.
MEF established TAB to incorporate input from all key stakeholder communities — cloud, network and technology providers — with the goal of helping the ecosystem grow faster and bring in market -leading services and solutions. TAB members will serve a one-year term and be selected for their broad industry leadership in MEF’s strategic areas — cybersecurity, business automation, SD-WAN, underlay connectivity, and edge computing. TAB will initially focus on increasing efficiency and opportunities within the member ecosystem and supply chain to generate revenue more quickly.
The Technology Advisory Board consists of ten industry luminaries:
- Kelly Ahuja, Chief Executive Officer, Versa Networks
- Kailem Anderson, Vice President of Portfolio and Engineering, Blue Planet
- Ari Banerjee, Senior Vice President Strategy, Netcracker Technology
- Rohit Batra, Vice President and Head of Product, Telecommunications, Media and Technology, ServiceNow
- Craig Connors, Vice President and General Manager, SASE Business, VMware
- David Fan, Vice President and General Manager, Communications Industry, Salesforce
- Sunil Khandekar, Former Founder and CEO of Nuage Networks, Independent
- Dave Larson, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager, Cloud & IP, Spirent Communications plc
- John Maddison, Executive Vice President of Products and Chief Marketing Officer, Fortinet
- JL Valente, Vice President, Product Management, Enterprise Routing and SD-WAN, Cisco
“We are excited to welcome this inspiring group of executives with invaluable leadership and knowledge to MEF’s new Technology Advisory Board,” said Nan Chen, President, MEF. “For more than 20 years, the MEF has been successful because of the extensive collaboration of its members and board leadership to help solve business challenges. Bringing TAB’s technology perspective further strengthens the industry partnership that drives enterprise digital transformation through a better integrated ecosystem of service providers, cloud, and technology. ”
“The development and launch of TAB is an important step in meeting the needs of the entire digital services ecosystem,” said Pascal Menezes, Chief Technology Officer, MEF. “Enhancing the MEF strategy with guidance from the vendor community on how to enable technologies in services and products to be delivered and managed will allow us to advance fully automated innovation offerings with the goal of help our members earn revenue faster. “
LSO Partner Conference
Also taking place in Paris, the MEF is hosting the inaugural LSO Partner Conference on May 4. The one-day conference brings together business leaders and executors from service providers, cloud, and cloud companies. technology to meet and network with buyers and sellers in The LSO Sonata community to expedite adoption, hear business and technical insights from industry leaders driving LSO adoption, and learn about the LSO API roadmap, committee developments, and available tools, resources, and programs designed to expedite review and implementation. MEF LSO APIs are gaining traction in the industry as the standardized way to quickly track inter-provider commercial automation.
Learn more
Find out more about TAB here.
Learn about MEF LSO APIs here.
About MEF
MEF is a global industry association of network, cloud, and technology providers working together to accelerate enterprise digital transformation through a better cohesive ecosystem. MEF delivers service standards, LSO frameworks and APIs, and training and certification programs for services, technologies, APIs, and professionals. The MEF 3.0 Framework enables automatic delivery of standardized Carrier Ethernet, IP, Optical Transport, SD-WAN, SASE, and other digital services across multiple provider networks. For more information visit MEF.net and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Here is what the Technology Advisory Board members said about joining the MEF TAB:
“Blue Planet is relentlessly focused on supporting service providers on their journey to digitalization to automate and future proof their networks. An ecosystem of diverse players needs to embrace open architectures, automation, and the cloud to realize the full vision of digital transformation. Joining the MEF Technology Advisory Board will allow us to better collaborate with like-minded stalwarts in the industry as we promote opportunities to quickly track the success of our customers. It also pushes us in the right direction towards growing this mutually beneficial ecosystem. ” – Kailem Anderson, Vice President, Portfolio and Engineering, Blue Planet
“Cisco and MEF share a strong commitment to enabling our ecosystem of industry -leading cloud and networking technology providers to help customers achieve their digital transformation goals. I am honored to join the new MEF Technology Advisory Board and look forward to working with my peers to advance our mission and contribute to new industry standards and certifications based on our collective expertise. Through collaboration, the MEF and its supporters empower businesses to accelerate their digital initiatives and grow their business. ” – Jean-Luc (JL) Valente, Vice President of Product Management, Enterprise Routing and SD-WAN, Cisco
“Fortinet has always believed in the value of bringing together an ecosystem of global technology leaders to drive collaboration. We are excited to join the MEF Technology Advisory Board and look forward to working with other members to meet the challenges. with the digital acceleration that organizations face. We believe our long history of innovation in networking and cybersecurity will serve as an important addition to the community. ” – John Maddison, Executive Vice President of Products and Chief Marketing Officer, Fortinet
“Netcracker has long been a supporter of MEF and its work in shaping industry standards. I look forward to working with my peers on the Technology Advisory Board as well as the MEF leadership and membership to advance key areas of technology, including edge computing, cloud, and digital transformation. ” – Ari Banerjee, Senior Vice President Strategy, Netcracker Technology
“While networking and security technologies are intertwined with the use of cloud-based services, MEF is in a unique position to offer technology vendors and cloud providers the strategic input and value to standardize and accelerate the delivery of their services and solutions to Businesses for their digital journey and give Enterprises ways to compare, contrast and adopt multi-vendor/provider solutions faster.
“I am pleased to join MEF TAB and look forward to contributing and working with other respected TAB colleagues, the MEF leadership, and its members to further assist this strategic initiative.” – Sunil Khandekar, Former Founder and CEO of Nuage Networks, Independent
“Salesforce shares a common vision with MEF to enable service providers to accelerate their journey of digital transformation into a connected ecosystem. Together as a community, we will create standards, automation, and certification to address the complex service delivery problems faced by most businesses today. I am excited to be part of the MEF Technology Advisory Board to collaborate with other stakeholders and bring innovations that will further contribute to the success of our customers and partners. – David Fan, Vice President and General Manager, Communications Industry, Salesforce
“The MEF, the Technology Advisory Board, and the board of directors together play an important role in shaping the future of the telecom industry, and I look forward to starting my term and doing my part to advance the field. New technologies have tremendous potential to make the industry better, for businesses, employees, and customers, and ServiceNow has an important part to play in that evolution. ” – Rohit Batra, Vice President and Head of Product, Telecommunications, Media and TechnologyService Today
“I am excited to be part of the new MEF Technology Advisory Board. As MEF’s SD-WAN Authorized Certification and Test Partner (ACTP), Spirent recognizes the tremendous value the organization has already brought to the industry ecosystem. By bringing together senior executives from leading global technology providers, TAB’s initiatives will undoubtedly help to further accelerate the development and delivery of new services and solutions. I look forward to being a part of this exciting collaboration. ” – Dave Larson, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager, Cloud & IP, Spirent Communications
“I look forward to working with the members of the new MEF TAB and offering my expertise gained in growing the market-share leading company SASE. Versa has a long history of active participation in MEF, including being one of the first SD-WAN vendors to be certified for MEF 3.0 Certification in SD-WAN, and currently participates in many different MEF committees. MEF appreciates Versa’s leadership and contributions over the years, including giving us numerous MEF awards, and we will provide valuable technology guidance on MEF’s efforts in helping the market grow faster. – Kelly Ahuja, Chief Executive Officer, Versa Networks
“Similar to how we saw workloads move from the private cloud to the public cloud, we will soon witness a significant shift to the edges of the cloud. To support the next generation of apps that will run in the end, the technology companies from different disciplines must work together to build the infrastructure foundation. I look forward to serving on the MEF’s Technology Advisory Board to help nurture the broad and diverse ecosystem that will drive change in the end. ” – Craig Connors, Vice President and General Manager, SASE Business, VMware
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8ce336af-bc7f-4754-a658-bcd83b67b1f4