Industry trade group MEF changed its name but not its focus, which COO Kevin Vachon said will continue to build on its decades of work behind standardizing carrier Ethernet and more recent efforts around network-as-a-service (NaaS) and secure access service edge (SASE).

MEF is now Mplify, a name that might look strange but one that Vachon said embraces the trade group’s growing focus outside of the traditional Ethernet space, and more specifically outside of the organization’s initial metro Ethernet focus.

“The reference to metro – because we use MEF – is limiting,” Vachon said. “We still have a lot of stakeholders that say, ‘you guys are just doing that Ethernet stuff, right,’ and it's something that we really want to shake. We just felt that we're probably long overdue, but we thought it was a good time to go ahead and make that change.”

And while the name might appear strange, Vachon did note that “we did some tests with people beforehand, and we had really good feedback. … You know, some people had to think about it for a few minutes.”

Optics and auditory change aside, Vachon said the name change is really about setting the organization up to handle an “increased scope of work and very ambitious work that's gone on for roughly a 10-year period.”

This includes building on its legacy focus on standardization work in the Ethernet space and its Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Reference Architecture and APIs, as well as more recent automation work with its SASE certification program and a “strategic shift toward enabling NaaS at a global scale.”

“It recognizes the tremendous work that we're all doing, that we've been doing, the relevance of that work for network-as-a-service, and better positions us to move forward into those new work areas, like AI, to be relevant in those areas,” Vachon said. “So rather than being attached to metro [Ethernet] as we think, we can add value going forward.”

And play well with others

Mplify will also maintain collaboration efforts with other like-minded organizations, though Vachon said the group will remain selective in that process.

“You have to be selective because you can't waste a lot of time,” Vachon explained, adding, “people want to partner for different reasons.”

Those partnerships that will remain include long-standing work with the TM Forum targeted at standardizing APIs.

“They're very focused on north-south in our suite of 60 APIs, and we've taken that and we've done the necessary work on top of that to create the standards for east-west,” Vachon said, adding that they are also close to formalizing work with telecom-focused trade group GSMA on APIs through the open-source Camara project.

“The intersection of network APIs, Camara-based network APIs, wireless-to-wireline APIs, and that's where we fit,” Vachon said.

Those efforts will remain central toward garnering continued ecosystem buy-in on what organizations like Mplify can bring to the table.

“The last thing executives want to hear of operators is these standards organizations, whatever you want to call us, not working together, competing standards that cause confusion. They want to hear that we're proactively trying to work together,” Vachon said. “And it's good because then you have multiple organizations going in the same direction, and you get these standards to industry faster.”