LOS ANGELES, May 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — MEF, a global industry association of enterprises and network, cloud, security, and technology providers accelerating enterprise digital transformation, today opened submissions for its 2025 NaaS Excellence Awards. The awards showcase innovation and leadership across the service and technology provider, and professional communities shaping the future of secure, cloud-like digital services delivered through a globally automated NaaS ecosystem. Winners will be honored at MEF’s Global Networking-as-a-Service Event (GNE), held November 10-14 in Dallas, Texas.
As enterprises seek more agile, secure, and cloud-like service experiences, MEF members are responding with automated, standards-based NaaS solutions – a model defined by MEF to ensure programmability, interoperability, and security across partner ecosystems. NaaS offerings combine on-demand connectivity, application assurance, cybersecurity, and multi-cloud networking within a unified service and automation framework. MEF’s Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) APIs, product payloads, and certification programs provide the foundation for trusted automation, standardized integration, and seamless collaboration.
The NaaS Excellence Awards recognize outstanding achievements across this evolving ecosystem—from LSO API implementations to secure SD-WAN and SASE deployments, and from modular service innovation to high-impact enterprise use cases, and emerging applications of AI in service automation and customer experience. New award categories introduced in 2025 include:
- Best NaaS Enterprise Customer Implementation
- Carrier Ethernet Innovation
- Leadership in Customer Experience Automation
- Leadership in Network & Service Automation
- NaaS Ecosystem Collaboration
- SSE and Zero Trust Providers of the Year
- NaaS Professional of the Year
“With the industry rapidly aligning around secure, automated, cloud-like service delivery, the 2025 NaaS Excellence Awards celebrate the leaders shaping the global NaaS ecosystem,” said Nan Chen, CEO, MEF. “These awards honor the companies and individuals driving real-world adoption of standards-based solutions that deliver meaningful outcomes for customers and partners alike.”
Submissions are open to MEF members and the broader industry across service provider, technology provider, ecosystem collaboration, and professional leadership categories. An independent panel of analysts and industry experts will evaluate all entries based on strategic relevance, measurable outcomes, and use of standards and APIs that enable ecosystem-wide automation.
Key Dates:
- Entry Deadline: June 26, 2025
- Finalists Announced: September 2, 2025
- Winners Announced: November 11, 2025, during the NaaS Excellence Awards Gala at GNE in Dallas
For more information and to submit an entry visit https://awards.mef.net/. For sponsorship opportunities or for more information about GNE or the awards gala please visit https://gne.mef.net.
About MEF
MEF is a global industry association of enterprises and network, cloud, security, 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. MEF’s Global NaaS Event (GNE) convenes executive decision-makers, strategists, technology experts, and enterprise users to collaborate and knowledge-share to accelerate the global automated NaaS ecosystem. For more information about MEF and to hear the latest podcast visit MEF and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Media Contact:
Melissa Power
MEF
pr@mef.net
