MEF Touts SDKs for LSO Interfaces

MEF announced two landmark interfaces for its Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) platform that were designed to automate service providers' SDN-based orchestration efforts across each other's domains.

The software development kits (SDKs) for the LSO Presto and LSO Sonata interfaces were announced on Tuesday and are now available for experimental use by MEF members and associated MEF programs.

MEF is working with the TM Forum on the LSO Sonata standardization effort, which included extending four of the TM Forum’s Open APIs to enable orchestration of MEF-defined services. The goal of Sonata is to automate processes among carriers, and this first release addressed validation, serviceability and ordering.

"The LSO Sonata SDK enables MEF members to experiment with open APIs for automating the service lifecycle and eventually commercializing products that align with the MEF IPSs that will be published in the future," said Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF, in a prepared statement. "Our objective is to accelerate adoption of the IPSs (Interface Profile Specifications) when they are available. Based on pre-standard versions of the IPSs, MEF SDKs enable developers to automate the generation of standardized open APIs." (See MEF Releases SDKs for Key Lifecycle Service Orchestration Interfaces.)

The Sonata SDK expanded the scope of API work that AT&T, Orange, TM Forum and Colt announced earlier this year to enable SDN interoperability across multiple provider networks. (See Colt, AT&T, Orange Partner on Orchestrated Services.)

"I'm thrilled to show that we fulfilled our plan communicated in February," said Didier Duriez, senior vice president, Orange Global Solutions for Business, in the press release. "Together with MEF and TM Forum, we have now a first SDK for LSO Sonata and first standard APIs to implement global on-demand services."

In addition to Colt, AT&T and Orange, CenturyLink, PCCW Global, Amdocs, DGIT Systems, Ericsson, iconectiv, Iometrix and Oracle are among the leading contributors to development of the LSO Sonata SDK release.

Within the LSO-defined framework, MEF members are also working to create a suite of standardized LSO Presto APIs that are defined in the MEF Interface Profile Specifications. Those APIs deal with network resource provisioning, performance monitoring and other functions across various technology domains. The LSO Presto NPR API is already supported by OpenDaylight's SDN controller.

“The LSO Presto SDK enables MEF members to experiment with the LSO Presto NRP API and to speed commercialization of products that will align with the upcoming NRP IPS,” Menezes said.

CenturyLink, Amartus, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC and Nokia are among the top contributors to the first LSO Presto SDK release.

Menezes will be talking about the latest MEF developments during a Telco Transformation radio show later this month. (See MEF: The Telco Transformation Journey.)

— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation