dset change that affects all aspects of a telecom operator's opera- tions-from who you hire, to how efficiently you can operate, to what you are able to create, to how quickly you are able to respond to market demands, and SO forth. It has the potential to create a major impact-the time to value decreases, decisions are data-driven, there is a marked improve- ment in quality, operational predictability increases, and costs are reduced. The shift to software can deliver far more than just innovation and speed. As telecom operators see the benefits, they are sharing and collaborating like never before. This chapter explores these themes. 17.1 INTRODUCTION In his 2011 essay "Why software is eating the world," Marc Andreessen made the case that software was changing every industry, and that a partnership with Apple (implying the importance of smart- phones and their apps) was evidence why software was transforming AT&T and Verizon. At that time, it was still a long way to go for AT&T in particular, and the telecom industry in general, before they could claim that they had transformed and were reaping the benefits of "a shift to software." But the general point of Andreessen's essay-software is eating the world-is central to this chapter [1]. Today, across all of telecom, there is a burgeoning notion that "a shift to software" provides gen- erative and accelerative possibilities not available from a slow, bespoke, vertically integrated, siloed, vendor-driven hardware-centric approach. The hardware-centric approach was wrapped in an army of program and project managers and typical "waterfall" methods. The hardware-centric approach was based on standards that took years to agree on, and were not guaranteed to survive. The recent push to a software-centric approach is to apply an "agile" methodology to developing new capa- bilities constructed with current modern methods, providing a path to change and a time to value that is SO frequent it can be thought of as continuous, real-time evolution. As an illustration, many mo