MEF hands out 31 Excellence Awards at GEN15 Conference

DALLAS, TEXAS: The MEF has announced the winners of the MEF 2015 Excellence Awards at GEN15 in Dallas, USA. Claimed to be an awards program that is the largest, longest-running in the world that is focused on Carrier Ethernet services and applications. It is the first in the industry to spotlight leadership in emerging dynamic Third Network services powered by CE 2.0, Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO), NFV, and SDN networking technologies.

The winners of 31 awards were presented at a special MEF Excellence Awards Dinner on November 17, 2015 – a highlight of the GEN15, global networking event held during November 16-19, 2015 at the Omni Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

"We had an outstanding level of quality from the entries for this year's new Excellence Awards program, with a particularly large numbers of entries in the technology-related categories,” said Nan Chen, President of the MEF. "The quality of the submissions reflects the excellent progress in reshaping the communications landscape and delivering new, innovative solutions for the global digital economy."

The judging panel for the awards was comprised of global and regional senior analysts from Current Analysis, Frost & Sullivan, IDC, IHS Infonetics, Metanoia, Ovum, SDxCentral, Vertical Systems, and independent judges.

MEF 2015 Excellence Awards Winners are listed below.

Enterprise Application of the Year Award Winners

• Best Application of the Year – Education – Comcast Business
• Best Application of the Year – Financial – TATA Communications
• Best Application of the Year – Government – AT&T
• Best Application of the Year – Healthcare – AT&T
• Best Application of the Year – Sports & Entertainment – Colt
• Best Application of the Year – Media – Telecom Italia Sparkle
• Best Application of the Year – Professional services – Colt

Service Innovation of the Year Award Winners

• Best Service Innovation of the Year – APAC – Telstra
• Best Service Innovation of the Year – EMEA – Telecom Italia Sparkle
• Best Service Innovation of the Year – North America – AT&T
• Best Service Innovation of the Year – Global – Telstra

Retail Service Provider of the Year Award Winners

• Retail Service Provider of the Year – APAC - PLDT
• Retail Service Provider of the Year – CALA - Level 3
• Retail Service Provider of the Year – EMEA – Colt
• Retail Service Provider of the Year – North America – Level 3
• Retail Service Provider of the Year – Global – Level 3

Wholesale Service Provider of the Year Award Winners

• Wholesale Provider of the Year APAC – Telstra
• Wholesale Provider of the Year CALA – Level 3
• Wholesale Provider of the Year EMEA – Colt
• Wholesale Provider of the Year North America – Level 3
• Wholesale Provider of the Year Global - PCCW

Best Service Provider Marketing of the Year Award Winner – Time Warner Cable Business Class

Best Service Provider Network Innovation of the Year Award Winner – Colt

Third Network Technology Solutions of the Year Award Winners

• Third Network Technology of the Year – CE 2.0 – Overture Networks
• Third Network Technology of the Year – LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) – Ciena
• Third Network Technology of the Year – Multi-Vendor Solutions – Oracle Communications, InfoVista  and Juniper Networks
• Third Network Technology of the Year – NFV-Based CPE – Accedian Networks
• Third Network Technology Solutions Vendor of the Year – Ciena

Professional of the Year Award Winners

• MEF Carrier Ethernet Certified Professional (MEF-CECP) of the Year – Marjory Sy, PLDT
• MEF Distinguished Fellows – Eric Puetz, AT&T and Raghu Ranganathan, Ciena
• MEF Industry Person of the Year – Axel Clauberg, Deutsche Telekom

Commenting on the recognition Raghu Ranganathan, Director, MEF and Principal, Office of CTO, Ciena, said, “I am very excited to receive this recognition and would like to thank Ciena for supporting my participation in MEF all these years. Collaboration with peers across the industry is key and I looking forward to more exciting progress towards realizing the Third Network vision.”

“We're honored to have our Network on Demand capability recognized by the MEF,” said Josh Goodell, Vice President of Network on Demand, AT&T. “We'll continue to enhance our platform and bring innovative technologies to market with the goal of helping to advance our business customers and the industry.”

Matthias Hain, Director Product Management, Colt Technology Services, said, “Once again we are very proud about our achievement confirming our consistence in high innovation and leading customer focus in providing the best Ethernet Services to them.”

“The recognition of our industry peers and the analyst community of the strength of our Ethernet offering to the financial sector is a great compliment to the team at Tata Communications,” said James Walker, Vice President of Managed Network Services at Tata Communications. “Our case study covered a global data centre network core for a major global bank, where the customer tells us we have shown real innovation and delivered a major benefit to their application infrastructure. We're very proud that this was also the view of the award selection committee.”