Verizon and Colt have demonstrated two-way intercarrier SDN network orchestration, paving the way for service providers to automate the provisioning of wholesale services across partner networks.
During an event in London, the two service providers showed how to make near real-time bandwidth changes in their live production networks.
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“Enterprise networking is in the midst of a revolution. Organizations today want intelligent, dynamic networks that respond automatically to their changing business needs,” said Peter Konings, EMEA head of product development at Verizon, in a release. “Before today, no-one has been able to demonstrate elastic flexibility across carriers.”
These service providers have continued to expand their respective portfolios of SDN and NFV-based services.
Verizon offers a host of software-based services that range from SD-WAN, virtual network services, and security services, while Colt has been pushing a series of on-demand services via its Colt IQ Network.
But this demonstration is part of a broader effort being made by not only Verizon and Colt alone.
The two service providers are working with the MEF to advance the development of industry standards, including intercarrier business and operational LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) APIs, which will accelerate the availability of this flexibility from many more partner networks.
Daniel Bar-Lev, director office of the CTO for the MEF said that “proof of concept demonstrations and trials of inter-provider service orchestration are critical steps for making agile, assured and orchestrated connectivity services that span multiple operators a reality.”
These two SDKs, which include LSO Sonata SDK and LSO Presto SDK, are part of a broader effort by the MEF to simplify the Ethernet ordering process.