One of the most critical issues facing the NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) community is the issue of a unified approach to management and orchestration (MANO). While consensus around ETSI’s NFV specifications has been remarkably swift and united, it is a different story when it comes to the higher layers, and how all those virtual network functions (VNFs) will actually be managed. There are two basic schools of thought, one driven by ETSI with its Open Source MANO (OSM) initiative, a follow-on activity for NFV which also has close ties to the standards body’s other key platform for the wireless world, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). The other is centered on the OpenStack open source platform, which is generally agreed to be…