Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, hosts in Rome until 20 April the Q2 2023 Members Meeting of MEF, the global industry association of more than 200 companies including network operators, cloud operators and technology providers working together to deliver dynamic, secure and certified connectivity services to accelerate enterprise digital transformation. The meeting opened today with a plenary session attended by Nan Chen, President of MEF, Elisabetta Romano, Chief Network, Operations & Wholesale ("NOW") Officer of TIM and Enrico Maria Bagnasco, Chief Executive Officer of Sparkle.
In her welcome address, Elisabetta Romano emphasised the importance of fostering alliances and strong cooperation between standardisation bodies and all players in the telecommunications sector, mentioning in particular the MEF work on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs): “We are at a time when there are many initiatives in the industry to define the best API formats for the different segments, and in particular MEF has more than 30 organisations using Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) APIs, a framework for enabling end-to-end automation that allows network operators and companies to communicate with each other and carry out business transactions in a fully digital manner, thus fast and reliable.”
In his opening remarks, Enrico Maria Bagnasco first recalled that “Secure and high-performance connectivity plays a key role in the digital evolution of enterprises and Sparkle, through its network, its international presence and synergies with NOW, is enhancing its role as a gateway for traffic in and out of Italy.” He went on addressing the need to automate business relationships between telecommunications operators, an area on which “Sparkle has been working since 2011 being one of the first telcos to obtain MEF 3. 0 certification for Carrier Ethernet services and the implementation of LSO Sonata APIs.” Bagnasco also pointed out the need for the entire service lifecycle to be automated, noting how “'the use of new technologies - such as blockchain - can contribute to make processes in the areas of billing, security, IoT, more reliable and fluid, ensuring traceability and scalability.”
Following the plenary, in addition to presenting its IoT connectivity solution, Sparkle demonstrated its new integrated connectivity and security service for enterprises SASE, with two use cases in the scenario of geographically distributed locations requiring constant secure access to the Internet and cloud, highlighting the key role of synergetic actions between its Security Operations Centre (SOC) and Network Operations Centre (NOC) in ensuring quality of service and security.
Sparkle has been a MEF member since 2011. Since then, the operator has been a pioneer and promoter in the adoption of the MEF guidelines and today participates in the strategic direction of the association with Daniele Mancuso, Chief Product Management, who is a member of the MEF Board of Directors since 2019, Antonella Sanguineti, Director Secure Cloud & Networking Product Management, Co-President of the MEF Integrated Trust Network Maintenance Council, and Lorella Scalcione, Director Information Technology, nominated in the new organisation Women@MEF.
About MEF
MEF is a global industry association of network, cloud, and technology providers working together to accelerate enterprise digital transformation through a better-together ecosystem. MEF delivers service standards, LSO frameworks and APIs, and training and certification programs for services, technologies, APIs, and professionals. The MEF 3.0 Framework enables automated delivery of standardized Carrier Ethernet, IP, Optical Transport, SD-WAN, SASE, and other services across multiple provider networks. For more information and to hear the latest Executives at the Edge podcast visit MEF.net and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Sparkle
Sparkle is TIM Group’s Global Operator, first international service provider in Italy and among the top worldwide, offering a full range of infrastructure and global connectivity services – capacity, IP, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice - to national and international Carriers, OTTs, ISPs, Media/Content Providers, and multinational enterprises. A major player in the submarine cable industry, Sparkle owns and manages a network of more than 600,000 km of fiber spanning from Europe to Africa and the Middle East, the Americas and Asia. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed over 32 countries.
Find out more about Sparkle following its Twitter and LinkedIn profiles or visiting the website tisparkle.com
Rome, 18 April 2023
