For the past couple years, SDN and NFV have rapidly evolved from PoC (proof of concept) stage, to the presently widespread deployment. The market has witnessed VNFs (virtualized network functions) bringing service providers new opportunities to optimize their infrastructures and increase service agility. They can move toward a more harmonized cloud-based infrastructure with this virtualized approach, where network elements and applications are defined as sets of virtual machines, virtual storage and virtual network configurations.

SDN and NFV have transformed the traditional network architecture from legacy, proprietary devices to network disaggregation where hardware, OS and VNF components can be leveraged by various third-party vendors.

The trend of network disaggregation has driven the evolution in network management for service providers, starting from proprietary black box solution, to grey box and white box solution for building vCPE and SD-WAN at branch network, MEC platforms at CORD (central office re-architecture data center), and HCI (hyper-converged infrastructure) at datacenters.