According to the Dell'Oro Group, though manufacturers and service providers are making significant investments in network functions virtualization (NFV), mainstream implementations are still years away. NFV enables service providers to design and construct networks using software virtualization and cloud computing technologies commonly used by Internet content and web service providers.

"It is exciting to see the energy around NFV with so many manufacturers and network operators pouring resources into developing NFV technologies," wrote Shin Umeda, vice president at Dell'Oro. "While much progress is being made across the NFV ecosystem, we think it will be several more years before large-scale implementations of NFV occur."