The MEF has published SD-WAN standards for service providers who are deploying the technology as managed services. The standards add service capabilities for underlay connectivity, application performance metrics and security zones.
“MEF develops standards and certifications to provide clarity and assurance and remove complexity for SD-WAN managed services. The new standards define the service behavior and associated policy language needed to deliver high-performance, secure SD-WAN managed services,” MEF CTO Pascal Menezes said () in a press release. “These standards, and the forthcoming SASE and Zero Trust standards, benefit both customers and providers—customers know what to expect when purchasing SD-WAN managed services from a provider, and providers have the tools needed to deliver secure SD-WAN services that drive customer satisfaction.”
The new standards include:
- MEF 70.1, which updates MEF 70, the industry’s first global SD-WAN standard. It includes new service attributes for underlay connectivity services, new measurable performance metrics that provide visibility into an application’s performance within the provider network and across multiple service providers, and the infrastructure to support application-based security defined in MEF 88.
- MEF 88, which is MEF’s first security standard. It enhances an SD-WAN service to add security functions. These include defining threats, malware protections, security policy terminology and attributes, and describing what actions a policy should take in response to certain threats.
- MEF 95, which provides a unified policy framework for MEF’s SD-WAN (MEF 70.1), Network Slicing (MEF 84), SASE (MEF W117) and Zero Trust (MEF W118) standards coming in 2022.
SD-WAN technology enables the decentralization of applications and storage and reduces the distance that data has to travel. This leads to lower transport costs and improves latency and jitter characteristics. Market analysts Frost & Sullivan say that the global SD-WAN market will grow from $2.85 billion last year to $14.5 billion in 2025, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38%.