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Mplify, the global alliance shaping the interoperable ecosystem for NaaS for AI and AI-ready digital infrastructure, announced finalists today for its 2026 Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) Excellence Awards. Winners will be revealed live at the Member Summit Americas, taking place September 22-24, 2026 in Boston, where industry leaders will come together to advance NaaS for the Agentic AI era.
The 2026 NaaS Excellence Awards finalists represent the organizations and individuals moving automated, interoperable, and AI-ready digital infrastructure from vision to real-world execution. Selected for their innovation, strategic relevance, measurable impact, and contribution to the broader ecosystem, the finalists demonstrate progress across high-performance interconnection, multi-party service coordination, secure connectivity, and standards-based automation. Together, they reflect the technologies, services and industry collaboration driving the next phase of NaaS.
Award finalists were selected based on rigorous criteria by a distinguished panel of senior analysts from ACG Research, Analysys Mason, Appledore Research, Atlantic ACM, AvidThink, CCSquared, Dell'Oro Group, Frost & Sullivan, IDC, Mplify, Omdia, STL Partners, TeleGeography, and Vertical Systems Group.
The 2026 NaaS Excellence Awards finalists include:
Amdocs
Amartus
Arelion
AT&T Business
Blue Planet, a division of Ciena
CMC Networks
Colt Technology Services
Comcast Business
DE-CIX
Equinix
Expereo
Graphiant
Lumen Technologies
Netcracker
Nokia
NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc.
Orange Business
Orchest Technologies
Palo Alto Networks
PCCW Global/Console Connect
RAD
Sage Management
Singtel
Sparkle
Tata Communications Limited
Ufinet
Verizon Business
Vodafone Business
Beyond organizational achievements, the 2026 awards will recognize individuals making a significant industry impact through leadership, innovation, and contributions to the evolution of NaaS and AI-ready digital infrastructure. Professional honors include Industry Executive of the Year, Michael Howard Industry Impact, and the Nan Chen Vanguard Award.
"The 2026 NaaS Excellence Awards finalists demonstrate the industry's growing momentum toward AI-ready digital infrastructure," said Stan Hubbard, Principal Analyst, Mplify. "A key development this year is the convergence of AI for NaaS and NaaS for AI: AI is helping operate the same programmable infrastructure that AI workloads consume. The finalists show how on-demand connectivity, application assurance, security, and multi-cloud networking are coming together within an increasingly automated ecosystem. As service delivery spans organizational boundaries, interoperability, reach, and trust become increasingly critical to scaling NaaS."
Awards will be presented during the NaaS Excellence Awards Gala on September 23, 2026 at Mplify Member Summit in Boston. Registration is available here.
About Mplify
Mplify is the global alliance advancing NaaS for AI and AI-ready digital infrastructure. It helps members compete beyond the limits of their own networks and capabilities by expanding reach, combining capabilities with ecosystem partners, and enabling trusted, standards-based automation across organizations. Its global community spans service providers, cloud providers, data center providers, internet exchanges, cybersecurity and technology companies, and enterprises. Together, these organizations shape standardized operational models and APIs, network services, trust frameworks, and certification programs that turn independent capabilities into an interoperable global ecosystem for the AI era.
Media Contact:
Amy Foschetti
Mplify
amy@mplify.net
