The highlight of the DTW 2018 event in Nice was the Bladerunner catalyst. This was notable in being a non Telco centric, dynamic and transient service. Most NFV products or proof of concepts still major on what are effectively variants of existing WAN or CPE products. The catalyst was about enabling a heavy machinary provider (Caterpillar) to set up an augmented reality diagnosis of a mining machine between an engineer in a remote UAE quarry and a product SME in a UK engineering centre. The catalyst demonstrated the inter-carrier orchestration of remote network functions in the UAE and their associated service assurance functions. No customer and nowhere to go A catalyst is not a working product (having often been lashed together rapidly with cludges) however it was demonstrating a real world solution to a real world problem. The challenge was the catalyst lacked the two crucial ingredients for a true digital transformation: Caterpillar, the customer, was not involved in the work and there was no obvious champion who could drive this forward into a real test or deployment. The only obvious next step for this catalyst seemed to be planning for the next catalyst whilst waiting for the underpinning technologies to […]