MEF, the global industry association accelerating enterprise digital transformation, has officially rebranded as Mplify Alliance, marking the start of a new era defined by scale, openness, and collective impact.
To better understand the meaning behind this transition, Telecom Review spoke with COO, Kevin Vachon, to learn how the organization will amplify collaboration, scale adoption, and drive shared innovation.
Building on Over Two Decades of Leadership
While the name and identity are new, Mplify builds on MEF’s legacy and industry leadership, while remaining rooted in the same mission: advancing standardized, secure, and automated services through collaboration and certification.
“We were incorporated 24 years ago as Metro Ethernet Forum, and we used the acronym, MEF, for a long time. We were very successful with establishing standards in the ethernet area, which we eventually called carrier ethernet. That was the origin of this organization for many years, and we branched well beyond that over time, providing capabilities for operators to interoperate globally as well as automate and secure their networks,” shared Vachon.
Mplify will continue the foundational work that positioned MEF as a defining force in connectivity-standardizing carrier ethernet, driving industry-wide automation with lifecycle service orchestration (LSO) application programming interfaces (APIs), and launching the only certification program for secure access service edge (SASE) solutions. “Those individual components fit well under our work plans. They are the enablers and the building blocks for us to evolve and expand our NaaS leadership going forward,” stated Vachon.
“A large percentage of the industry still sees us focused on ethernet, as they should to some degree. But we felt it was the right time to select a name which not only is a better representation of what we look like today, and how we’ve evolved, but also where are we going with the organization,” explained Vachon.
“It is the right time to give us the opportunity to take more of a future focus, leveraging our name to reflect the fact that we have a much broader vision now than we had before.”
It is worth noting that Mplify has a global community, comprising 200 member companies from the Americas (50%), APAC (25%) and EMEA (25%) regions. “We want to have a name that is more inclusive, reflecting the evolution of our community,” added Vachon.
All existing programs, memberships, and initiatives will continue under the Mplify brand, with members expected to benefit from the same trusted community and technical rigor with a modern voice, more accessible identity, and expanded opportunities for innovation.
NaaS: The Road Ahead
Mplify’s rebrand signals a strategic shift toward enabling Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) on a global scale. Defined by standardized, automated, and certifiable service components, NaaS is the foundation for delivering secure, AI-optimized digital experiences across increasingly dynamic, distributed environments.
“In the last two years, we’ve established NaaS blueprints for what we think are the components and the direction that operators want in the way they sell services to enterprises, and how enterprises will consume this next generation of services,” pointed out Vachon.
As demand grows for programmable, on-demand, and multi-cloud services, Mplify is accelerating the frameworks and certifications that make NaaS real, and focusing on turning collaboration into scalable, production-ready capability.
This evolution will be on display at the third annual Global NaaS Event (GNE) on November 10-14, 2025, where production use cases, AI-powered automation, and new service models will take center stage.
Key NaaS-Led Areas of Focus for 2025-2026
With a focus on AI, automation, and cybersecurity, Mplify unites global connectivity leaders—enterprises, system integrators, and service, cloud, and technology providers—in shaping the next era of secure, automated, and intelligent services.
“AI is a huge issue that we’re working on. We talked to a lot of operators and they’re all trying to figure out how exactly they are going to monetize this AI opportunity,” remarked Vachon. “They’re exploring what types of AI-driven products to bring to market, and Mplify is helping them do exactly that.”
At its core, carrier ethernet is a future-proof technology developed from standardized services. More than 500 operators around the world have leveraged these standards, resulting in a global carrier ethernet footprint with great investments in use cases over the years. In fact, operators can leverage this very-high-speed fabric to support AI workloads between data centers.
“This is very strategic for operators going forward,” continued Vachon. “From that perspective, the name [Mplify] represents our history, as well as a forward-looking investment opportunity.”
Enterprises will buy these services directly from service providers. The APIs that Mplify has developed (LSOs) are ready to support AI products as the market shifts toward cloud-like service consumption, intelligent automation, and AI-optimized networking.
“In other words, if I’m a big enterprise and I want to buy a GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) from a service provider, that can all be purchased and onboarded through Mplify’s APIs,” said Vachon.
Moreover, in terms of validating secure solutions, Mplify offers SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network), SSE (security service edge), and zero trust across three phases: service provider inheritance, service provider-level testing, and integrated solution testing.
“We believe that enterprises are going to be looking for more security validation on the services they procured from their operator partners to ensure adherence to industry standards and best practices… We’ll be a validation authority for that,” noted Vachon.
Mplify’s Key Pillars in Advancing the NaaS Ecosystem
Alongside Mplify’s technical strategy are four key pillars that enable the delivery, scalability, and trust required for successful NaaS adoption.
Firstly, standardized, certified services, also known as the services pillar, are intended for on-demand connectivity, application assurance, cybersecurity, and multi-cloud networking. The second pillar is automation, driven by Mplify’s LSO APIs. Despite the industry’s early entrance in automation, Mplify already has over 165 service providers worldwide using or implementing these APIs.
“We’ve now become the de facto standard for East-West or inter-ecosystem automation with LSO. This isn’t a one-time achievement; it’s an ongoing process, with capabilities expanding year-after-year, needed for all sorts of different use cases.”
The third one is certification, which is crucial for conformity, interoperability, and market advantage. Lastly, Mplify has made ecosystem collaboration a priority to complete proof of concepts (PoCs) and scale adoption.
“By putting the right people in the room, and doing the right work, there is an opportunity to amplify the impact on the industry. And that’s really what we’re trying to do,” concluded Vachon.
Renewed Identity, Expanded Mission, Global Community
Mplify represents more than just a name change; it embodies MEF’s evolution into a broader, future-focused alliance designed to accelerate the global adoption of secure, automated, AI-optimized services. By building on its 24-year legacy of standardization and collaboration, Mplify empowers members to scale innovation, monetize next-generation services like AI and NaaS, and leverage trusted frameworks such as carrier ethernet and LSO APIs.
With a renewed identity, expanded mission, and a global community, Mplify is set to amplify industry collaboration, deliver new revenue opportunities, and shape the next era of intelligent, secure connectivity.
