Intel, and others. The main principals in ECOMP and Open-O worked cooperatively to join forces, harmonizing the open source network automation space, under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. Positively for the industry, these two projects joined forces to create the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) within the Linux Foundation. Throughout this chapter, and in the rest of this book, the abbreviation ONAP will be used to refer to this software-defined, open source, networking automation platform. A virtualized network function (VNF) automation software platform like ONAP is critical for service providers in achieving the network cloud vision, delivering on the imperatives to increase the value of the network to customers by rapidly onboarding new services, by enabling the creation of a new ecosystem of cloud consumer and enterprise services, by reducing capital and operational expenditures, and by providing operational efficiencies. ONAP also delivers enhanced customer experience by allowing the customer in near real-time to reconfigure their network, services, and capacity. While ONAP does not directly support legacy physical elements, it works with traditional operations support systems (OSSs) to provide a seamless customer experience across both virtual and physical elements. ONAP enables network agility, elasticity, and improves time to market, revenue, and scale via the Service Design and Creation (SDC) module, allowing for visual modeling and design. ONAP provides a policy-driven Operational Management Framework (OMF) for security, performance, and reliability/resiliency utilizing a metadata-driven repeating design patterns at each layer in the architecture. It reduces capital expenditure (CapEx) through a closed-loop automation approach that provides dynamic capacity and consistent failure management when and where it is needed. It facili- tates operational efficiency though the real-time automation of service, network, cloud delivery, and lifecycle management provided by the OMF and application com