Nuage, Versa, and Infovista today became the first vendors to receive the MEF 3.0 SD-WAN certification. The certification, developed by MEF and first announced in November, aims to help network operators and IT professionals choose an SD-WAN vendor with confidence.

“We congratulate Nuage Networks, Versa Networks, and Infovista for achieving MEF 3.0 certification and demonstrating that they are a standards-based partner for service providers developing SD-WAN services," said MEF President Nan Chen in a statement.

Certified vendors have been tested against the requirements defined in the MEF 70 SD-WAN Service Attributes and Services standard. In this case, Spirent Communications tested the the initial three vendors.

However, according to MEF CTO Pascal Menezes, the standard is based on behavior rather than technical specifications or protocol. “It describes the behavioral model, not the implementation,” he said in an earlier interview with SDxCentral. “We never describe implementation because every vendor wants to take the behavior and do their own implementation on it.”

For many, including Nuage Networks founder and CEO Sunil Khandekar, the MEF 3.0 certification is something of a badge of excellence that will help the company stand out in an increasingly confusing market.

“The availability of the MEF 3.0 SD-WAN technology vendor certification is an important step in providing enterprises an industry benchmark for vendor selection, and Nuage Networks from Nokia is proud to demonstrate its SD-WAN market leadership as a member of the first group to achieve this certification milestone,” he said in a statement.

Infovista Chief Product Officer Mike Wilkinson agreed, calling the certification an essential step toward realizing this goal. "We believe that it will help SD-WAN users in selecting a vendor that is committed to a market model that provides service consistency and interoperability," he said.

The initial round of certifications comes after more than two years of development beginning somewhere around 2017. In 2018 MEF launched the 3.0 multi-vendor SD-WAN implementation project, which culminated in the release of a draft in May and its subsequent unveiling last year.

MEF says standardization will help to accelerate the SD-WAN market and improve customer service by enabling them to compare apples to apples, or in this case vendor to vendor.

By standardizing SD-WAN, “it allows the subscriber to buy a service from a managed SD-WAN operator and to understand what they are going to get,” Menezes said.