Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO)

The purpose of this white paper is to identify the essential Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) and management capabilities necessary to achieve the key aims of the MEF’s Third Network1. These capabilities will allow the Third Network not only to dramatically decrease the time to establish or modify the characteristics of the end-to-end service, but will also assure the overall service quality and security for these services. Differentiated service performance in the Third Network will be dynamically changeable based on the subscriber’s desires. Since services may also traverse multiple operator networks, the Third Network provides orchestration for real-time management supporting global reach beyond the footprint of any single network operator.”
Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF).

The MEF has just recently issued their management vision for “The Third Network,” or their third major iteration of carrier Ethernet, based on Network as a Service principles (see link above). Their vision of LSO plays a key part in their aim to make CSP networks: Agile, Assured and Orchestrated. It aims to allow for interworking of concepts such as Carrier Ethernet 2.0, SDN, NFV and more.

This concept has been gaining the attention of many in the industry, so the white paper is definitely worth a read. A high-level snapshot is shown below (sourced from here):

Another quote from the white paper provides a view of the building blocks that MEF intends to construct the LSO upon, “Carrier Ethernet management within the MEF includes a number of projects that are relevant to enabling LSO. The management work in the MEF begins with the MEF Service and Attribute definitions to create protocol-neutral information models that are then collected into interface profiles driven by use cases, which will ultimately lead to API and reference implementation development. The Carrier Ethernet management information model provides a description of the managed objects that are needed in a Carrier Ethernet provider’s operations environment. The MEF also created the management foundation for SOAM Performance Monitoring and Fault Management. New initiatives are being initiated to support the identification of Interface Profiles for Element Management System (EMS) to Network Management System (NMS) and for the various use cases needed for LSO.”

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