Embarking on a virtualisation project? Move slowly, embrace uncertainty, battle to attract the right staff (and expect to lose) and don't assume major savings, delegates at SDN World Congress have been told.

"It's complicated." The infamous Facebook description for hedging your bets about a relationship could well describe the state of virtualisation, according to day one of SDN World Congress.

Nokia has added assurance capabilities, introducing analytics and performance indicators, to its software-defined networking (SDN) offering.

NEC and Netcracker have launched a network-as-a-service (NaaS) solution to help operators orchestrate their virtualised functions and cloud applications and rapidly commercialise new applications.

Nokia is hoping its own recent experiences integrating a new company will give it the edge in transforming operators' networks as they shift to the cloud.

Orange is testing AT&T's software defined network platform ECOMP as it looks to grow its virtualisation strategy.

Nokia has opened a Global Cloud Design Centre in the United Kingdom aimed to help the deployment of multi-vendor cloud networks.

Momentum for software defined networking is growing, with a new IHS survey finding three quarters of operators have deployed the technology or are planning to this year.

More than four out of five operators will deploy network functions virtualisation in 2017, new research has found, although operators are concerned about integrating the technology into existing networks and have bemoaned the lack of carrier grade products.

Cognitive computing and machine learning have reached ‘peak hype’ among emerging technologies, according to Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle, an annual review mapping technological trends against their perceived hype.

TIM will deploy virtual RAN (vRAN) in Italy this year, following the July launch of “intelligent” cloud RAN based on virtualised hardware in Palermo.

Cisco is the leading supplier of software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) solutions, according to a new survey of telecoms operators by market research firm IHS Markit.

Tele2 is to deploy Nokia's Cloud Packet Core solution across its entire footprint as it looks to cope with more dynamic network requirements as the industry moves towards 5G.

Orange and AT&T are trying to speed up the standardisation of software defined networking and network functions virtualisation technologies through a collaboration focusing on customer premises equipment, APIs and virtual network functions.

The global network functions virtualisation market will break through the $15 billion mark by 2020, driven by widespread adoption of NFV software, a new report has claimed.

Mobile Europe has launched a survey into virtualisation, aiming to explore how firmly telcos have got to grips with the technology.

China Mobile has shifted its rich communication services to a virtual IP multimedia subsystem (vIMS) in what is believed to be the world's largest deployment of the technology.

Operators are increasingly turning to the virtualisation of policy management systems as a means of addressing issues with scalability and flexibility, new research has claimed.

Seven out of 10 operators are planning to virtualise some or all of their messaging services over the next four years, a new report has found.

The carrier software-defined networking market is set to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 98 percent betweeen 2015 and 2020, as the trickle of virtualisation deployments become a flood.