Almost three years in the making, Harmonic has finalized the deal of a lifetime – signing up cable behemoth Comcast to license its CableOS platform over four years for at least $175 million in software license fees. First things first though, Comcast has hinted at a network virtualization project which in the future it would license to cable operators in much the same manner as its X1 platform. If the syndication of a virtualized cable modem termination system (vCMTS) is anything as successful as its X1 licensing business, then the virtualized cable market is in for a shakeup of astronomic proportions. In doing so, Harmonic’s CableOS, which Comcast played a part in the design of, could become not just the…