With less than a month left until the Global NaaS Event (GNE 2024) kicks off, the excitement is building. Kevin Vachon, COO, MEF, spoke to Telecom Review and shared more details about the upcoming event.
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MEF is hosting the second edition of the Global Network-as-a-Service (GNE) event. How will this year build upon last year's success?
Last year's Global Network-as-a-Service (GNE) event was a foundational gathering that established a comprehensive overview of the Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) ecosystem. It was successful in providing a snapshot of the industry and the perspectives on NaaS for enterprises, service providers, technology vendors, wholesale providers, retail providers, and hyperscalers.
This year, we're focusing on evaluating the advancements that have occurred over the past year, identifying current challenges, and forecasting future developments. If you’re in the NaaS business, this event is where attendees will get a real time status of the industry. We’re also enhancing the event by expanding our programs, such as the Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) Automation Summit and incorporating more enterprise perspectives.
The goal is to continue improving the overall attendee experience by inviting executive speakers who will share their insights and drive the level of attendee satisfaction up. We had great feedback from last year’s event and look forward to growing GNE, specifically with more enterprise participation.
The business-driven GNE 2024 conference program is designed to address three pivotal themes. Can you elaborate on these themes and why they were chosen?
The three key themes are:
- Enterprise NaaS:Led by our Enterprise Leadership Council (ELC), enterprise executives will address their expectations and needs regarding NaaS, including consumption models and service provider roles. They will share their perspectives on digital transformation drivers, cloud-first strategies, AI-enhanced networking, cyber threats, SD-WAN, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and NaaS adoption.
- NaaS Offering Evolution:Sessions and panels will explore the development and variety of NaaS offerings, including retail and wholesale services, and discuss service demand and bundling innovations. Security will also be a big focus. We’ll highlight our new State of the Industry Report on SASE; challenges in the cybersecurity landscape, including the increased risk of major cyberattacks; and the key steps our industry needs to take to contain these attacks.
- Ecosystems and Automation:A key focus at GNE will be the global ecosystem needed for NaaS delivery and the role of automation, particularly through our LSO framework. This global ecosystem requires a lot of different types of players, including service providers, wholesale providers, data center operators, and technology vendors, among others, to all work together and be automated together. We’ll assess the progress and challenges in ecosystem development and automation and provide real business use cases of the buyer and seller journeys.
These themes will cover the critical areas shaping the future of NaaS, including enterprise needs, service evolution, and the importance of automation in a global context.
Why is there a need to offer a truly global perspective on the future of NaaS?
A global perspective is essential because NaaS relies on a global ecosystem of technology and service partners to ultimately deliver a NaaS experience to businesses. Standards need to be universally applicable to avoid issues with non-standard or proprietary implementations and the varying levels of technological advancement and economic development in different regions. You can’t assume that the industry is at the same stage in different parts of the world. Global strategies must account for local realities to ensure effective implementation.
For example, building addresses are implemented differently in different parts of the world. This presents a huge global headache without a common approach—that is something we are working on here at MEF with some of our key member companies. We will be drilling deeper into that topic at our GNE event.
How will MEF continue to help its customers adapt to the evolving global automated NaaS ecosystem?
MEF is evolving into a global collaboration platform and we’re using NaaS as our guiding light. We continue to support our members and the industry by bringing together key ecosystem players and offering industry leadership through programs and standards and APIs. We produce essential industry artifacts, such as our NaaS Industry Blueprint and our NaaS Experience White Paper, to guide and align the industry. Additionally, we’ll maintain a technical work plan for NaaS so we can continue our standards development and contribute to ecosystem automation through our LSO framework. Our goal is to facilitate collaboration, provide valuable insights, and lead with actionable standards and guidelines.
In one sentence, what makes GNE 2024 a must-attend gathering for executive decision-makers, industry analysts, strategists, technology experts, and enterprise users?
GNE is invaluable because it brings together experts and thought leaders across the NaaS community in one place. Attendees gain access to rich content, have the opportunity to network with peers, and leave with actionable insights to refine and advance their NaaS positioning and strategies.
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