 established command and con- trol process that provides guidelines on how AT&T will respond to network service degradation or faults, traffic anomalies, and congestion/capacity issues. Telecommunications providers such as local exchange carriers, interexchange companies, satellite companies, and cable companies all have FCC reporting requirements for outages that exceed certain thresholds. The incident managers in the GTOC perform the critical role of outage reporting and FCC filing preparation. Although there has been significant investment in the development of automation in the last several decades, the rate of growth and change in the network is starting to outpace our ability to deliver automation as a separate set of software applications running on top of the network ecosys- tem. In fact, we have added complex features and new elements solely for the purpose of managing Network Operations al Network Operations Center FIGURE 15.2 Global Technology Operations Center. the network at tremendous scale (e.g., traffic engineering, RFC3107, fast reroute, label switching, etc.). Another significant driver of operations work is the many different elements that are being used in the network infrastructure, each one being a unique platform. For example, there are in excess of 50 specific network elements performing unique functions that are involved in providing end-to-end mobility service! This proliferation of unique platforms has been an obstacle to com- moditizing many operational functions and applying automation to reduce the operations workload. While the preceding section captures the current state of the affairs, the emergence of new technologies, especially NFV and SDN, presents a unique opportunity to streamline and automate network operations functions. This is discussed in the sections that follow. 15.2 IMPACT OF NFV AND SDN ON NETWORK OPERATIONS As discussed in earlier chapters, NFV and SDN are driving a fundamental transformation in how networks and network-based services are designed and managed. From