Ralph Santitoro, director of Carrier Ethernet Market Development, Fujitsu (News - Alert) Network Communications, has been re-elected to a fifth consecutive term on the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) board of directors.

Officials with MEF (News - Alert) said that Santitoro's commitment to the widespread adoption of Carrier Ethernet is evident in his diverse leadership roles in MEF technical, marketing and certification committees over the past 11 years.

Officials said that a founding member and key contributor since the forum's inception in 2001, Santitoro has provided leadership in defining all MEF Carrier Ethernet Services from retail E-Line, E-LAN and E-Tree defined in MEF 6.1 to wholesale E-Access defined in MEF 33.

He simultaneously leads the CE4Cloud project, which is evolving Carrier Ethernet networks and services to better support on-demand, elastic, pay-as-you-go cloud-centric applications which is discussed in the recently published "Carrier Ethernet for Delivery of Private Cloud Services" paper he co-authored.

Santitoro also created the MEF Carrier Ethernet Professional Certification Program which is the industry's first vendor-independent certification targeting Carrier Ethernet technical professionals.

"Ralph has been a longstanding contributor to MEF and we are once again pleased that he will participate strategically as an MEF Board member," said Nan Chen, president, MEF, in a statement.

"He has consistently worked to coalesce our industry around Carrier Ethernet standardization, education and compliance. We look forward to his efforts in new areas of focus including Cloud Computing and Professional Certification," said Chen.

Santitoro said that working with industry colleagues from around the world to advance this critical communications technology is very rewarding.

"This collaboration benefits many as MEF compliance has become the criteria for selecting their Ethernet services or networking equipment. Being at the forefront of this industry enables me to help Fujitsu's customers define and develop highly differentiated Ethernet service offerings that address a wide range of applications," said Santitoro.

In his role as Director of Carrier Ethernet Market Development at Fujitsu, Santitoro provides industry thought leadership and works with customers to create MEF-compliant service offerings using Fujitsu packet optical networking and Ethernet service management solutions to deliver superior performance, scalability, management and return on investment.

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