"[With NFV, you] have a choice of hardware. So you can build network applications on standard server hardware because the software is desegregated," said Gadiyar. "Now you can open up the ecosystem, and it’s no longer only a few players building network applications, such as wireless, network security and so on. Now you can innovate much faster, and you have a large ecosystem."

Gadiyar also discussed why open source is a critical component in this process, as well as Intel’s overall business transformation.

"Open source played a key role in our NFV and SDN journey in terms of how we have transformed the network infrastructure," said Gadiyar. "With open source, there is always a community that’s working with each other collaboratively to drive innovations faster."

Beyond this topic, Gadiyar and Sharlin discussed the shift to a "containerized" mindset of leveraging Kubernetes to bring the cloud anywhere – an approach that has the potential to unlock the true potential of 5G moving forward.