dern e-commerce websites and financial systems are dynamically changing many times an hour, and often very dramatically and significantly, to respond to the market as quickly as is possible. The goal of the transformation to Network Cloud, is to achieve similar benefits for the telecom industry. Switching from an operations mindset focused on manually configured, vendor-proprietary hardware-based products, to a developer mindset focused on automation and open-source software is the central theme of the transformation to a Network Cloud. Once a commitment to software and Building the Network of the Future a developer mindset is made, then a cadre of useful techniques, technologies, and cultures appear. The UNIX philosophy, agile development methods, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standard for service management, "Design Patterns" for reusable templatization of soft- ware, open-source licenses and communities, application programming interface (API) exposure, microservices and DevOps are some examples. In addition to gaining the benefits of software technologies and methods, developing and culti- vating an ecosystem of third-party developers and collaborators, as has been successfully demon- strated with personal computers, Web 1.0 and 2.0, and mobile applications, is a prime objective for the telecom industry in this "shift to software." Open-source software's primary strength is that, in addition to unfettered access to software, it inherently comes with a collaborative ecosystem. In the case of the open-source projects surrounding network functions virtualization (NFV) and software defined networking (SDN), the participation, and involvement of operating entities around the world is unparalleled, both in scope and in achieving results. For a telecom operator, the "shift to software" can bring significant benefits in the operator's capabilities-rapid response to market demands, flexibility, and extensibility when it comes to aug- menting products and services, and streamlined operations, to 