Los Angeles, CA, 5 April 2017 – MEF, the driving force enabling agile, assured, and orchestrated Third Network services, is pleased to announce plans to demonstrate a reference implementation of LSO (Lifecycle Services Orchestration) analytics using Platform for Network Data Analytics (PNDA), a Linux Foundation project. MEF will work within its OpenLSO Analytics initiative to demonstrate both open source and closed source versions of MEF members’ LSO products integrated with PNDA. This reference implementation will illustrate how big data analytics (BDA) can be used within the MEF LSO Framework to intelligently automate configuration and allocation of network resources in real-time and proactively deliver service assurance for demanding applications in complex networking environments.

MEF’s community of 130 service provider members, LSO leadership, and extensive experience in standardizing connectivity service attributes and reporting make MEF well-positioned to identify how BDA should be used, what data should be collected within operators, and what filtered data should be shared when orchestrating services in a federated multi-provider environment.

“We appreciate the opportunity to partner with The Linux Foundation to advance LSO analytics,” said Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF. “A key goal of LSO is to enable service providers to transition from a silo-structured BSS/OSS approach toward end-to-end orchestration that unleashes tremendous agility and service velocity. BDA is essential to this vision, enabling rapid operational and business insight that can be used to drive behavioral changes in the network to dynamically optimize the customer experience.”

“The Linux Foundation is pleased to share a common vision with MEF on the critical role that open source big data analytics can play in accelerating the transition to more agile, assured, and orchestrated services,” said Marc Cohn, VP of Network Strategy, The Linux Foundation. “PNDA’s open framework aligns with MEF’s role in defining APIs, and its options for data collection are on the forefront of the leading thinkers in the field.”

“Analytics will enable LSO to realize the vision of reactive networking,” said David Ward, CTO of Engineering and Chief Architect at Cisco, whose team has made important contributions to development of PNDA and MEF LSO. “Orchestration service models provide the context for analytics, while output from analytics can be used to optimize deployed services and program intent directly into the network through feedback to LSO orchestration and control functions.”

“Analytics, together with policy, will play a central role in enabling automation and closed loop operations in the new open network,” said Ann Hatchell, head of open network marketing at Amdocs. “As a strong supporter of MEF’s LSO initiative and as a key founding member of The Linux Foundation’s new ONAP project, we look forward to defining reference flows for analytics data into the MEF reference architecture.”

Demonstrating PNDA Within LSO Framework

PNDA was first demonstrated in connection with MEF’s OpenLSO Analytics project during the MEF16 LSO Hackathon in November 2016, with PNDA providing performance analytics for services provisioned by LSO. The demo illustrated how PNDA makes it possible to bring together multiple datasets which previously would have been in separate silos, add service context from LSO, then enable rapid prototyping and development of analytics applications.

PNDA is being demonstrated this week in the SDN & NFV Solutions Showcase at The Linux Foundation’s Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California.

*Next Steps for LSO Analytics *

Going forward, MEF’s OpenLSO Analytics project will focus on demonstrating analytics as part of Third Network services user stories, enabling analytics to span multiple service providers, and feeding requirements into MEF specifications work. PNDA can be leveraged to provide operational and business insights and customer analytics outcomes.

MEF and PNDA experts will be progressing OpenLSO Analytics work at the Euro17 LSO Hackathon held during the 2Q17 MEF Members Meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, 24-27 April. Contact Charles Eckel ([email protected]) or Daniel Bar-Lev ([email protected]) for LSO Hackathon details.

About PNDA

PNDA, a Linux Foundation project, is an open source Platform for Network Data Analytics. PNDA aims to eliminate complexity by integrating, scaling and managing a rich set of open data processing technologies and by providing an end-to-end platform for deploying analytics applications and services. Visit pnda.io for more information.