The Evolution of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS): 2020–2025
Over the last five years, the phrase Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) has moved from aspirational slideware to actual industry practice. At its core, NaaS is about consuming networking capabilities — connectivity, performance guarantees, and security — in an on-demand, subscription-based model. For enterprises, this reflects the same shift that compute underwent with cloud adoption: away from capex-heavy ownership toward outcome-driven Opex.
This blog examines the progress of NaaS from 2020 to 2025, the standards and frameworks that enabled it, and the implications for the next phase of enterprise networking.
Defining NaaS
NaaS is often misunderstood as “cloud-managed networking.” In reality, it has several defining characteristics:
- Outcome-driven: Enterprises buy performance guarantees, not just bandwidth.
- Elasticity: Services scale up or down with demand.
- API-first: Ordering, assurance, and lifecycle management are programmatic.
- Opex-focused: Consumption aligns with usage and avoids long hardware lifecycles.
For enterprises with distributed sites or unpredictable workloads, NaaS simplifies consumption while reducing lead times.
Standards That Enabled NaaS
The emergence of NaaS depended heavily on standards-based automation. Two communities were central:
- MEF Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO): Defined APIs (Sonata, Legato, Interlude) for quoting, ordering, inventory, assurance, and billing.
- TM Forum Open Digital Architecture (ODA): Defined an operating model and Open APIs for exposing services as modular, composable building blocks.
Together, they created a common contract language. In 2024, MEF and TM Forum announced alignment of their APIs, reducing duplication and accelerating adoption. In 2025, MEF’s ninth LSO release added observability constructs, enabling providers to exchange experience-level KPIs across ecosystems.
Enterprise Benefits
For enterprises, NaaS changes procurement and operations:
- Faster service turn-up: What used to take weeks of manual coordination can now be initiated via API calls.
- Transparent performance: Experience metrics flow directly into enterprise observability platforms.
- Elastic cost models: Bandwidth or security capacity can be increased during seasonal spikes and scaled back afterward.
These benefits are particularly valuable in regions where lead times for physical loops remain long, but digital overlays can provide agility.
Provider Benefits
For providers, NaaS offers:
- Standardized integration with partners, lowering onboarding costs.
- Catalog-driven offers that can be composed into bundles.
- Differentiation through automation rather than proprietary features.
By exposing services as APIs, providers can participate in federated ecosystems, where multiple carriers deliver an end-to-end service seamlessly.
Workforce and Market Trends
The rise of hybrid work and cloud-first application adoption created demand for services that could be provisioned quickly and monitored continuously. Enterprises no longer accept “best effort” WANs — they expect measurable SLOs tied to user experience.
Surveys between 2023 and 2025 showed enterprises increasingly prioritizing automation, elasticity, and visibility in networking decisions. NaaS addresses these needs by treating the network as software.
Future Trajectory
Looking ahead, NaaS will evolve in three key ways:
- Marketplace integration: Enterprises will consume networking alongside cloud compute from unified marketplaces.
- AI-assisted operations: Automated systems will recommend capacity changes, optimize routes, and resolve incidents.
- Compliance-aware services: APIs will expose not just performance but also compliance posture, such as data residency adherence.
Conclusion
NaaS is not just a billing model; it is a redefinition of how enterprises consume connectivity. By aligning with MEF and TM Forum standards, it transforms networking into a programmable, composable, and transparent service. Between 2020 and 2025, the groundwork was laid; the next five years will see NaaS become as natural as cloud compute.
Key Sources
- MEF LSO Sonata and Legato documentation
- TM Forum ODA and Open APIs
- MEF LSO Release 9 (2025)