Despite all the work on standards and openness – sometimes because of it – both telco network and IT vendors, which are battling to take the leadership role in virtualization/SDN, are dealing with a difficult transition period. Carriers are dialling down their capex investments in physical networks as they prepare to shift to the different economics of a software-driven network – based more heavily on opex and data center or cloud investments. But these programs are generally immature and will not account for large budgets – except in a few cases like AT&T – for several years at least. To make things worse for network OEMs, while operators will still have to invest in physical kit at their cell sites…