e bandwidth and throughput between any two end points. Transport technology has continually evolved from the early local access and long-distance transport networks. Fundamental advances in the copper, radio, and fiber technologies have pro- vided cheaper, more durable, and simpler to manage transport. The traffic being transported has evolved from analog to digital (time division multiplexed) to IP. Layered protocols have enabled many different services to share a common transport infrastructure. The hub and spoke, fixed band- width, fixed circuits, and relatively long duration switched sessions (an architecture that grew with the growth of voice services) are no longer the dominant patterns but one of many different traffic patterns driven by new applications such as video distribution, Internet access, and machine-to- machine communication, with mobility being an essential part of the offering. This evolution has now made it possible for the global telecom network to be the foundation for not just voice, data, and video communication among people, but also for a rich variety of social and economic activity transacted by billions of people all over the world. The next thing on the horizon is the Internet of Things (IoT)-driven by the ability to connect and control tens of billions of remote devices, facili- tating the next round of productivity gains as operations across multiple industries get streamlined. Traditionally, the users of carrier networks were fairly static and predictable, as was the traffic associated with them. As a result, the underlying architecture that carriers relied on at the time was, more often than not, based on fixed, special purpose, networking hardware. Since the operating environment within a Telecom operator followed an organizational approach that separated the IT and Network groups, the growth in traffic and the variety of services that needed to be supported, created an environment where the ability to respond to business needs was increasingly restricted. The networks of today 