PARIS, May 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MEF, a global industry association of network, cloud, and technology providers accelerating enterprise digital transformation, today at its quarterly members meeting in Paris, France, announced the launch of a Technology Advisory Board (TAB). Comprised of senior executives from leading global technology companies, the TAB augments the leadership and expertise of MEF’s world-class board of directors and brings important technology provider perspectives to the strategic work of MEF.

MEF established the TAB to incorporate input from all key stakeholder communities—cloud, network and technology providers—with a goal of helping the ecosystem more quickly develop and bring to market leading-edge services and solutions. TAB members will serve a one-year term and were selected for their extensive industry leadership in MEF’s strategic areas—cybersecurity, business automation, SD-WAN, underlay connectivity, and edge computing. The TAB initially will focus on increasing efficiencies and opportunities within the member ecosystem and supply chain to more quickly generate revenue.

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 & 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 & 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 thrilled 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, MEF has been successful because of the extensive collaboration by its members and board leadership to help solve shared business challenges. Bringing in the technology perspective of the TAB further strengthens the industry collaboration that drives enterprise digital transformation through a better-together ecosystem of service, cloud, and technology providers.”

“The formation and launch of the TAB is an important step in meeting the needs of the entire digital services ecosystem,” said Pascal Menezes, Chief Technology Officer, MEF. “Honing MEF’s strategy with guidance from the vendor community about the way technologies enable services and products to be delivered and managed will enable us to advance fully automated transformational offerings with the goal of helping our members realize revenue faster.”

LSO Partner Conference

Also taking place in Paris, MEF is hosting the first-ever LSO Partner Conference on May 4. The one-day conference brings together business leaders and implementers from service provider, cloud, and technology companies to meet and network with buyers and sellers in the LSO Sonata community to accelerate adoption, hear business and technical perspectives from industry leaders who are driving LSO adoption, and learn about the LSO API roadmap, committee developments, and available tools, resources, and programs designed to speed up evaluation and implementation. MEF LSO APIs are gaining industry traction as the standardized way to fast-track inter-provider commercial automation.

Learn More
Find out more about the 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-together 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 automated 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.

Media Contact:
Melissa Power
MEF
pr@mef.net

Here’s what Technology Advisory Board members have to say about joining the MEF TAB:

“Blue Planet is relentlessly focused on supporting service providers in their digitization journey to automate and future-proof their networks. It takes an ecosystem of different players who embrace open architectures, automation, and the cloud to realize the full vision of digital transformation. Joining the MEF Technology Advisory Board will enable us to better collaborate with like-minded industry stalwarts as we advocate for opportunities to fast-track our customers’ success. It also steers 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 be joining the new MEF Technology Advisory Board and look forward to collaborating with my peers to advance our mission and contribute to new industry standards and certifications based on our collective expertise. By working together, MEF and its supporters empower enterprises 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 address the digital acceleration challenges organizations face. We believe our long history of innovation across networking and cybersecurity will serve as a valuable addition to the community.” – John Maddison, Executive Vice President of Products and Chief Marketing Officer, Fortinet

“Netcracker has been a longstanding 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 MEF’s leadership and membership to advance key technology areas, including edge computing, cloud, and digital transformation.” – Ari Banerjee, Senior Vice President Strategy, Netcracker Technology

“As networking and security technologies get intertwined with the adoption of cloud-based services, MEF is in a unique position to offer the technology vendors and cloud providers strategic input and value to standardize and accelerate the delivery of their services and solutions to Enterprises for their digital journey and provide Enterprises the means to compare, contrast and adopt multi-vendor/provider solutions faster.

“I am pleased to join the MEF TAB and look forward to contributing and working together with the other esteemed colleagues of the TAB, the MEF leadership, and its members to help further this strategic initiative.” – Sunil Khandekar, Former Founder & CEO of Nuage Networks, Independent

"Salesforce shares a common vision with MEF to enable service providers to accelerate their digital transformation journey in a connected ecosystem. Collectively as a community, we will work on standards, automation, and certifications to address the complex service delivery problems that are faced by most enterprises today. I'm excited to be part of the MEF Technology Advisory Board to collaborate with other stakeholders and bring innovations that will help better enable the success of our customers and partners." – David Fan, Vice President and General Manager, Communications Industry, Salesforce

"MEF, the Technology Advisory Board, and the board of directors together play a critical role in shaping the future of the telecom industry, and I'm looking forward to beginning my term and doing my part to drive the field forward. New technologies have enormous potential to make the industry better, for businesses, employees, and customers, and ServiceNow has a key part to play in that evolution." – Rohit Batra, Vice President and Head of Product, Telecommunications, Media & Technology, ServiceNow

“I am delighted 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 that the organization already brings to the industry ecosystem. By bringing together senior executives from leading global technology providers, the TAB’s initiatives will undoubtedly help to further accelerate development and delivery of new services and solutions. I look forward to being part of this exciting collaboration.” – Dave Larson, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager, Cloud & IP, Spirent Communications

“I look forward to collaborating with the members of the new MEF TAB and offering my expertise gained in growing the market-share leading SASE company. Versa has a long history of active participation with MEF, including being one of the first SD-WAN vendors to be certified for the MEF 3.0 Certification in SD-WAN, and currently participating on many different MEF committees. MEF has valued Versa’s leadership and contributions over the years, including awarding us numerous MEF honors, and we will lend important technology guidance to MEF’s efforts in helping grow the market faster.” – Kelly Ahuja, Chief Executive Officer, Versa Networks

“Similar to how we saw workloads move from the private cloud to public cloud, we are about to witness a significant shift to edge clouds. To support next-generation apps that will run at the edge, technology companies from across various disciplines must collaborate to build out the foundational infrastructure. I look forward to serving on MEF’s Technology Advisory Board to help nurture an extensive and diverse ecosystem that will drive innovation at the edge.” – 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 


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MEF Technology Advisory Board Members

MEF's Technology Advisory Board will bring technology supplier perspectives to MEF’s work, and help to increase collaboration among key ecosystem stakeholders to benefit the entire industry.
Source: MEF

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