The 92 page document is designed to help service providers develop, market, and deliver the next generation of NaaS offerings.
It also outlines how enterprises make informed decisions about which NaaS offerings are right for their specific needs and customers.
"The MEF NaaS Industry Blueprint provides a foundation for the industry to build on as it develops the NaaS ecosystem," said Nan Chen, President, MEF.
"By providing a common framework for understanding and defining NaaS, the blueprint will help service providers develop and deliver innovative offerings and enable enterprises to make informed decisions about which are right for them. We are confident that the MEF NaaS Industry Blueprint will play a major role in driving the growth of the NaaS market and helping businesses achieve their digital transformation goals."
Pascal Menezes, MEF’s CTO, told media and analysts that a video would be released by MEF that goes through the document and explains key points to service providers and enterprises.
Menezes also said a further report on the areas covered by the blueprint will be released in 2024.
MEF defines NaaS as on-demand connectivity, application assurance, cybersecurity, and multi-cloud-based services across a standards-based automated ecosystem.
While this is generally the assumed definition, the model is open to interpretation, so MEF hope the blueprint can help with some form of standardisation and agreement.
In addition to defining NaaS, the blueprint proposes primary building blocks of NaaS solutions, including services, automation platforms, ecosystem, and certifications.
It also references Reference available MEF service and Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) automation API standards and other industry tools for building and delivering NaaS services.
As of publication, MEF itself has published more than 100+ Standards and more than 65 active projects to support NaaS implementations.
Finally, the blueprint present initial NaaS use cases in the areas of on-demand transport, SD-WAN, SASE, and multi-cloud, although a disclaimer notes that some of these use cases may not use MEF API’s.
