Network services underpin operator revenues, and value-added services provide income
beyond core (voice and data) infrastructure capability. Today, operators face multiple
challenges: a need to innovate and offer a wider choice of value-added services, whilst
increasing network scale, bandwidth and flexibility. They must also reduce operational costs,
and deploy services far faster-in minutes rather than days or weeks. In the recent years, the
network community, motivated by the aforementioned challenges, has developed production …