The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) on Monday reelected Ralph Santitoro, Director of Carrier Ethernet Market Development for Fujitsu (OTC: FJTSY.PK), to a fifth consecutive term on its board of directors.
Over the past 11 years, Santitoro, one of the early Ethernet service pioneers, has served in various technical, marketing, and certification committees at the MEF.
At a time when Ethernet services were eclipsed by the presence of Frame Relay and ATM as the dominant data services in most businesses, Santitoro joined a group of forward-thinking telecom professionals to found the MEF in 2001.
During his tenure at the MEF, he has helped spearhead a number of now well-known standards for delivering retail Ethernet services such as E-Line, E-LAN and E-Tree, defined in MEF 6.1, in addition to wholesale E-Access, defined in MEF 33, for applications like wireless backhaul.
Two of the key projects that Santitoro is currently leading are the CE4Cloud project and MEF Carrier Ethernet Professional Certification Program.
The CE4Cloud project, which is discussed in the "Carrier Ethernet for Delivery of Private Cloud Services" white paper he co-authored, focuses on how the service provider's continual roll out of Carrier Ethernet networks and services can support on-demand and pay-as-you-go cloud-centric applications.
Timing for the CE4Cloud project couldn't be better as more large service providers, notably AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL), Orange Business Services and Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN), continue to expand their data center and cloud presence. Fiber-based Ethernet links are quickly becoming the standard method to connect enterprise customers' private and public clouds to the data centers that house their data.
No less important is Santitoro's role in developing a professional training program for Ethernet. The MEF Carrier Ethernet Professional Certification Program is a vendor-independent certification program for telecom and IT workers.
For more:
- see the release
Download our eBook: Connection-Oriented Ethernet
Related articles:
Fujitsu's Santitoro maintains spot on Metro Ethernet Forum board
Verizon's Ihab Tarazi becomes the Metro Ethernet Forum's new Chairman