As virtualized networks scale up, and huge numbers of virtual network functions (VNFs) have to be managed, the role of the orchestration layer becomes more and more mission critical. No wonder, then, that there is a mighty power struggle in this area of the NFV space, a struggle which may wreck the dreams of a fully open, interoperable platform. The relatively quick convergence of the carrier industry around ETSI’s NFV specifications raised hopes that, in the teeth of telecoms history, we were entering a new era of unified foundations. But in the MANO (management and orchestration) stack, there are already two major open source efforts aiming to provide the glue for all the vendors’ offerings, and several major carriers are…