The outlook for Carrier Ethernet is very robust, according leading U.S. service providers at last week's GEN15 event in Dallas. Vertical Systems Group is forecasting that by 2020 there will be over four million ports installed worldwide, of which approximately 1.3 million ports are expected to be in the U.S. This build-out of Carrier Ethernet infrastructure is further expected to become the platform NFV-driven advanced services. The GEN15 event focused onenabling the future of agile, assured, and orchestrated services that are powered by CE 2.0, LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration), SDN, and NFV.
In a keynote at GEN15, Josh Goodell, VP of AT&T's Network on Demand, said its platform is already in 170 markets across of the country. Ethernet on Demand is the first service, to be followed shortly by a Managed Internet on Demand service.
Some notes from GEN15:
- The MEF continues to focus on Carrier Ethernet 2.0
- MEF reports growing intereset in its Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) initiative. Work on LSO has shifted from high-level architecture to developing API components.
- Industry collaboration toward the globalization of CE 2.0 and the MEF's Third Network vision is growing
- The Ethernet Interconnect Points (IEP) Project will link CE 2.0 networks using ENNIs, the foundation for LSO
- MEF Certification Programs for Service Providers and for Equipment vendors have continued to expand
- The first 100G CE 2.0 certications have been awarded to Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cisco, Coriant, Huawei, and Infinera. The 100G CE 2.0 testing and certification was performed by Iometrix
- The MEF has collaboration projects underway with ATIS, ETSI, IEEE, IETF, ITU, Open Daylight, OpenCloud Connect, OPNFV, ONF, and tmforum.
- RAD, Sandvine, and CenturyLink conducted a joint Proof of Concept (PoC) demonstration of application-aware service level agreement networking solutions. This showed Service Assured Access and Cloud Services Policy Controller in an application-aware networking architecture.
- PCCW Global has selected CENX’s Cortx Service Orchestrator to enhance elements in its VPN and cloud offerings that will facilitate self-serve, on-demand connectivity. Using an on-line portal, integrated to PCCW Global’s OSS and BSS environments, customers can dynamically scale their bandwidth connectivity and cloud data center resources.
- Wedge Networks, which supplies orchestrated threat management solutions, named James Hamilton as its new CEO. Hamilton previously was CEO of TippingPoint, the company that defined Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and that was acquired for $430 million by 3Com, where he stayed on and continued to lead the TippingPoint line of business.
- Cylance, a start-up applying artificial intelligence, algorithmic science and machine learning to cyber security, announced that Dell will integrated its technology into Dell Data Security solutions. This collaboration builds on the Dell Ventures investment in Cylance earlier this year.
- GEN15 was hosted at the Omni Hotel in Dallas and attracted about 1,000 registered attendees from 280+ organizations based in 35 countries. GEN15’s 55 sponsors included Host Operator Sponsor AT&T, Platinum Sponsors Comcast Business, Cox Business, PCCW Global, Verizon, Ciena, and dozens of other service, technology, and test companies.
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