MEF recently completed our second annual Global NaaS Event (GNE), gathering leaders and stakeholders from 140 organizations globally to advance NaaS across an automated ecosystem. As the industry’s premier NaaS event, GNE serves as the central platform for the latest NaaS developments and connects executive decision-makers, strategists, and technology experts driving innovation.
GNE drew participants from across the NaaS landscape, with 75% of attendees at the executive, senior director, or director level. This high-level engagement led to an action-oriented event with unique insights into emerging trends, ecosystem requirements, and the latest NaaS advances, including quantum-secure connectivity.
Two quotes from participating MEF Board members capture the event’s collaborative spirit:
Dave Ward, CTO, Lumen: “GNE brought together a vibrant mix of industry leaders and enterprise customers, creating an ideal space for collaboration and exploring NaaS innovations that meet the demands of GenAI, cloud migration, and cybersecurity. The high caliber of attendees elevated every discussion, making this event essential for driving network evolution.”
Franck Morales, SVP, Marketing and Business Development, Orange Wholesale International, “Alone, you go faster. Together, we go farther.”
Throughout the event, speakers addressed key industry topics that align with MEF’s newly released 2025 NaaS Industry Blueprint, reflecting the industry’s evolution over the past year.
NaaS Across an Automated Ecosystem: A central focus of GNE was aligning industry stakeholders on NaaS concepts, service components, and a standards-based approach to build end-to-end automated supply chains from enterprise networks, across service providers, to data centers and cloud platforms. While debates continued around defining NaaS, there was clear progress on modular offerings, ecosystem collaboration, and the importance of standards. MEF’s influence is evident, with NaaS-related publications downloaded by professionals from 700 organizations in the last 18 months, underscoring the growing awareness and interest in NaaS.
Enterprise Engagement and Use Cases: Tailoring NaaS to specific enterprise requirements was highlighted, with modular and flexible options to address diverse challenges, including multi-cloud access, on-demand connectivity, and cybersecurity. Case studies shared by enterprise participants underscored the increasing demand for customized NaaS solutions to meet specific operational needs.
MEF Enterprise Leadership Council (ELC) Initiatives: The ELC is actively shaping NaaS development by integrating direct enterprise perspectives into MEF’s initiatives in service automation, cybersecurity, and AI-Ops. Key contributions from the ELC included the new LSO Circuit Impairment & Maintenance (CIM) Service API, allowing providers to automate and standardize communications regarding network circuit impairments and scheduled maintenance for enterprises.
AI and Multi-Cloud Integration: A critical topic was the integration of NaaS with AI and multi-cloud platforms. This approach allows enterprises to manage high-performance workloads across various clouds, ensuring efficient data flow for AI-powered insights. Emphasis was placed on creating robust, AI-ready networks capable of supporting the data-intensive requirements of AI training and inference.
SASE and Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity was front and center, especially in light of current threats to critical infrastructure. Sessions covered the evolution from SD-WAN to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and the role of SASE in bolstering NaaS cybersecurity. MEF recognized 15 technology and service providers with MEF 3.0 SASE certification, validating the cyber defense and performance capabilities of their solutions. A notable development was Sparkle’s introduction of a Quantum-Safe over Internet (QSI) service, combining NaaS with post-quantum encryption.
Open LSO APIs for Automated Supply Chains and Interoperability: MEF LSO APIs were widely endorsed for automating business and operational interactions across NaaS partners. Over 160 service providers are at various stages of adopting LSO APIs, spanning from early exploration to full production. Important new developments include the extension of LSO APIs to enterprise customers and the implementation of both LSO business and operational APIs in space.
Federation and Collaboration: I had the great pleasure of moderating a future-oriented executive debate on NaaS federation and marketplaces with Colin Bannon, BT Business; Daniele Mancuso, Sparkle; Franck Morales, Orange Wholesale International; and Daniel Bar-Lev, MEF. We explored the value and challenges of building a NaaS federation, which can be thought of as the infrastructure that supports creation of on-demand supply chains for network services.
For more in-depth insights, access 17 hours of GNE video content on MEF’s GNE 2024 Presentation Recordings page. Mark your calendar for next year’s GNE to be held 10-12 November in Dallas!
As Principal Analyst with MEF, Stan Hubbard engages with executives and other experts from the world’s most innovative communications service and technology companies. His key areas of focus include service automation, SD-WAN, SASE & more related to digital transformation. For more than 23 years Stan has been in the communications industry in various roles including strategic marketing, industry analysis, analyst relations, public relations, global event programming, and public speaking.