IT standards company ETSI is moving forward with its Phase 3 plans for multi-access edge computing (MEC).
Since the start of the year, an ETSI MEC industry specification group (ETSI ISG MEC) has been working on the plan to accelerate and enable more effective collaboration between organisations.
As well as updating many Phase 2 reports and specifications, the group recently released an updated MEC Terminology, the ETSI GR MEC 001.
Another key milestone of Phase 3, the ETSI specification on MEC Framework and Reference Architecture, GS MEC 003, introduced the MEC Federation architecture variant.
This variant is an important enable for supporting the requirements coming from the GSMA operator platform group. It enables inter-MEC system communication and allows 5G operators to collaborate among themselves and with service cloud providers and other stakeholders.
This architecture also “federates” their edge computing resources by offering their MEC service capabilities for mutual consumption, and for application developers and end customers
Dario Sabella, chair of the ETSI ISG MEC, said: “Due to increasing attention from the industry on MEC technologies, the ETSI ISG MEC membership is continuously growing. We have also noticed an increased engagement of companies, leading to Phase 3 dramatically ramping up with all its activities.
The normative work in multi-access edge computing is keeping its usual approach and commitment to deliver open standards in alignment with other standards development organisations, to avoid duplication of work and promote collaboration with relevant stakeholders, including industrial associations and open-source projects.”
In addition to Phase 3, the group enhanced its MEC Open Area with drafts of two updated specifications to foster the collaboration with other bodies such as GSMA and 3GPP. These two specifications on Edge Platform Application Enablement (MEC 011) and Federation enablement APIs (MEC 040), are critical for Phase 3 work, especially in the view of MEC Federation. Publicly available, this open area provides visibility to all stakeholders about ISG MEC’s on-going progress on key specifications.
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