MEF's Stan Hubbard on accelerating automation with APIs

DENVER – MEF Annual Members Event – Service providers have long been working toward automated networks. One way service providers are reducing manual processes is by adopting MEF's Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Sonata APIs. Currently, 22 service providers are in production with the APIs, which automate inter-carrier transactions of connectivity services such as Carrier Ethernet.

Stan Hubbard, principal analyst for MEF, said an additional 90 service providers are now tracked in the LSO Sonata adoption lifecycle – from interest through to implementation. Of those 90 operators, 41 are committed to using the APIs.

"We launched our LSO framework about five or six years ago," said Hubbard. Service providers that utilize the LSO APIs can improve their service delivery, accelerate time to revenue and improve the customer experience, he added.

"Service providers had to deal with lots of manual processes up until now," said Hubbard. " … We're saying, 'Invest in the APIs, standardize APIs one time, and be able to use that with your partners on the buy and sell side. It has huge potential to save time in the long run'."

You can download an unedited transcript of the podcast here. If you want to skip around and listen, here are a few more things covered in this interview:

• Background on MEF's Annual Members Meeting (00:33)
• Update on MEF's new Technology Advisory Board (TAB) (01:28)
• Service provider adoption of LSO Sonata APIs to manage and automate transactions of business functions (02:16)
• How the use of APIs moves the needle on network automation (04:30)
• Initiatives to develop standards for SD-WAN and SASE services (08:45)
• Educating enterprise customers on SASE (09:52)
• Using blockchain to verify billing and settlement (12:40)

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