In September this year the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) announced its vision for the future of global networking. MEF believes that business today is served by two types of data networks: Carrier Ethernet (CE 2.0) delivering services with guaranteed performance and security, but taking considerable time to initiate across multiple providers; and Internet/IP, delivering on-demand, ubiquitous services but with so many performance and security issues they produce daily headlines.

Increasing demand for enterprise connectivity and the boom in data traffic are sustaining growth in the European wholesale and retail carrier Ethernet services market. Uptake is rising further as the adoption of cloud services escalates in the region. While the United Kingdom, Germany and France constitute the three largest markets, the less mature Eastern European economies are exhibiting the fastest growth rates for Ethernet services according to recent analysis from Frost & Sullivan.

Frost & Sullivan says that the wholesale Ethernet services market earned $2.73 billion in 2013 and estimate this to reach $5.16 billion in 2018. Meanwhile, retail market revenues stood at $3.10 billion in 2013 and are projected to hit $5.63 billion in 2018. Although both the metro and long-haul segments will contribute to market revenues, the need for inter-city enterprise connectivity will spur faster growth in long-haul services.

While the market offers immense potential, Ethernet services vendors also face several challenges:

• ·         Price erosion, which is affecting revenues
• ·         Slower uptake in the aftermath of the economic downturn, especially in Southern Europe
• ·         Layer 3 MPLS-VPN or multiprotocol label switching-virtual private network is edging out retail Ethernet in terms of enterprise interest

“With fierce competition making customer acquisition and retention difficult, it is important for providers to improve their economies of scale in order to increase profits and push ahead of competitors,” said IDC's Shuba Ramkumar. “Focusing on switched Ethernet services, acquiring regional competition, and offering converged services will help vendors consolidate their position.”

Developing extensive network presence, automating network services, and offering performance monitoring tools will also be key strategies for success in the European wholesale and retail Ethernet services market.

The other side of the coin is MEF which recently announced its vision for the future of global networking. It believes that there is a need for a new Third Network delivering, as they put it:-

Agile, Assured and Orchestrated services worldwide, where:

• ·         Agile means delivery of real-time on-demand services;
• ·         Assured means delivery of performance and security guarantees;
• ·         Orchestrated means automated delivery of services across multiple service providers.

The IT industry is never short of promises for amazing future solutions and, even when it is possible to solve the technological issues, their realization is often delayed or even negated by economics, politics or the basic realities of ruthless business culture and competition.

What we saw in Washington
Visitors to November’s GEN14 in Washington DC were treated to a live Proof of Concept Showcase capturing the spirit of the Third Network and GEN14.

The exercise was meant to demonstrate collaboration across any number of different networks and diverse vendor equipment showing the potential future of global networking, which is what today’s business wants to see as a future-proof investment that will not lead to lock-in by vendor or provider (according to MEF).

Four demonstrations covered
Self-service NaaS quoting and ordering; Dynamic automated NaaS fulfilment orchestration, wholesale E-Access orchestration and finally InfoVista’s visibility tools provided synchronized assurance that the service was being delivered exactly as specified.

The demonstrations formed six groups, representing five different collaborating teams plus a demonstration by Cyan that spanned a range of networks and vendors’ equipment. In each case the core demonstration was of fast, on-demand configuration and activation of services, while some also showed how customers could pick and order from a catalogue of services online, and some also demonstrated performance monitoring and reporting on demand. The live demonstrations connected to remote locations, labs and other booths on the exhibit show floor.

Modding and activating Ethernet across the cloud
Two service providers, Allstream Inc. and Tata Communications, demonstrated the modification and activation of Ethernet services (MEF standard CE4Cloud IA) spanning their two independent clouds. The two providers each have their own order management systems, but using the MEF’s standardized External Network Network Interface (ENNI) and based on MEF’s draft CE4Cloud information model, the two systems worked together, extending CE 2.0 Interconnect to elastic services, for faster availability of secure and assured cloud services.

Flexible architecture based on MEF and internet standards should allow easy extension from on-demand to scheduled Cloud scenarios, and transition to customer portals, while rich orchestration assures complete control over a process of service configuration performed over multiple service providers.

Orchestration solutions
Meanwhile Amartus and Transition Networks demonstrated Amartus’ Chameleon SDS and Transition Networks’ Converge orchestration solutions. The demonstration focused on two application scenarios that exploited a Transition Networks CE 2.0 network via a REST API based on TMF and MEF standards. The first scenario by Transition Networks demonstrated the use of iPad Apps and the REST API to deliver easy-to-use field engineer solutions for provisioning and operation of the network.

Run-time introduction and cloud provisioning
The second scenario by Amartus demonstrated the run-time introduction and provisioning of a complex Cloud hosted corporate IP Multimedia infrastructure service using a dynamic service catalogue approach. This service used a reliable CE 2.0 network service to connect each corporate site to the Cloud hosted IMS solution based on best in breed open-systems, open-standards and open-source NFV, SDN & Cloud technologies. The entire end to end service was established in a single provisioning request.

The Box-agnostic look
CenturyLink’s partnership with Ciena demonstrated a service provider’s ability to automate the orchestration of MEF services in a “box agnostic” domain. Any service provider’s core offering is services – so ideally it should not be over-concerned about the underlying hardware – Ciena’s role was to provide kit to implement the open APIs specified by CenturyLink. These APIs allow both reading and writing of the network, providing a further demonstration of automated API testing, including bearer plane verification.

How SN and NFV improve CE 2.0 infrastructure
The demo reflected work by these and other MEF members on the upcoming MEF 7.3 information model. Cyan’s demonstrations showed how multivendor CE 2.0 infrastructure is enhanced by SDN and NFV, with an emphasis on actual savings being realized in real-world deployments. In the case of a Europe-wide network spanning 23 nations and 46,000km of fiber, their modular multi-service platform with SDN showed up to 60 percent savings in infrastructure and access costs; with NFV and virtual customer premises equipment (such as on-demand firewalls or encryption) the same carrier may be capable of achieving 80 percent savings (says MEF); at the same time, they are on a path to a 50 percent reduction in operational costs.

Another demonstration was of an Asian network connecting the top 100 data centers across APAC. They were able to achieve enhanced agility by introducing a new service where they went from initial concept to public launch in just four weeks and achieved more than 30 percent operational savings.

Network as a Service with Oracle InfoVista
Network as a Service is a core concept in the MEF’s Third Network vision and, in the Oracle InfoVista showcase, it demonstrated how this can be integrated into business management processes. The customer can specify a CE service (MEF 7.3, 10.3 & 26.1) online, including end-to-end design fulfilment and performance management across multiple networks, technologies and providers.

The demonstrations did a decent job of making the MEF’s Third Network vision more tangible, real and relevant to future service delivery.