This week incumbent network equipment providers Ericsson and Nokia made major service provider software announcements, the former around service management and orchestration and the latter on a multi-faceted SaaS offering. These launches are indicative of the move away from hardware-based and toward software-based revenues which both firms indicated a little more than a year ago.
Let’s rewind to the third quarter of 2020. Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm, speaking on an earnings call in October last year, said, “We think the industry will be more of a software industry longer-term so that’s critical for us to position ourselves in that.”
