Nan Chen also mentioned other recent technical advances, including a new E-Access service – the MEF’s first specification for standardizing the buying and selling of wholesale MEF Carrier Ethernet services – that will accelerate provisioning for local, regional and global services. Further work on the global interconnect program included approval of MEF 26.0.3 – Service Protection across External Interfaces – and letter ballot passage of MEF 26.1 that includes support for E-Tree across the ENNI. The strong interest in this quarterly meeting – the second of a regular series to be held in APAC – underlined its significance to a region holding 42% of the total global market for Ethernet business services. According to Nan Chen, the MEF Certification Program has been a key factor in accelerating this market acceptance because the programs ensure: “Equipment that service providers can rely on to build fully compliant high performance Carrier Ethernet services; secondly services that earn buyers’ trust by conforming to MEF standards of quality and performance; and now also professionals with the proven knowledge and skills – providing a widely recognized benchmark for customer credibility and career advancement.” The first level – with two further levels under development – is already being awarded to individuals on the basis of an examination covering the fundamentals of Carrier Ethernet services. Concluding his brief revue of the MEF’s 10 years of progress, he referred to one piece of MEF current work items on Carrier Ethernet as an “Cloud Carrier” – developments addressing the secure, business-class delivery of cloud based applications as a supplement Internet delivery. He predicted “significant new markets for Cloud Providers and Cloud Carriers, with new, on-demand, dynamic Carrier Ethernet services.”