Patrick Kelly Layer 123 hosted their annual SDN NFV World Congress in The Hague last week. The event attendance was down from last year. We estimate that less than 1,000 stakeholders attended the event. Layer 123 event founders Robert Jones and Mark Lum sold the event organization to EuroMoney in May 2018. The event peaked in 2016 and has been in decline both in terms of attendees and exhibitors as the overall market investment for NFV solutions has stalled. The industry is at a crossroad. Appledore Research met with CSPs, suppliers, and system integrators at the event over a 3-day period. The underlying themes from our conversations follow: CSPs are not accruing the benefits of NFV. The shift from hardware to software should yield flexibility and lower cost but this is not currently being realized. Instead, we see additional spending on Openstack, high integration cost into existing management stacks, VNFs that look like PNFs and automation being applied using old workflow processes. CSPs are attempting to harness the power of opensource and build a eco-system but efforts are fragmented. See our Market Outlook report on ONAP. ONAP Market Impact CSPs are squeezing their suppliers for price concessions and proof that […]