Jim St Leger, Intel's software product line manager, is a "software guy in a silicon company," he tells Martyn Warwick, but that marriage (software and silicon) has laid the foundation for NFV. Nearly five years ago Intel decided it could move demanding packet and data plane workloads, which conventionally required dedicated silicon, onto Intel's increasingly capable silicon architecture. With Intel's 'Data Plane Development Kit' partners such as HP could now construct servers capable of handling the demanding data throughput required by NFV.

Today, Intel's partners are ready for commercial deployment.