Customers want truly universal and open CPE and hosted network services. They will have to be provided

The consensus amongst CSPs is to realise and accept that customers in general, and global multinational corporation in particular are very seriously focused on universal CPE and hosted network services. From the perspective of equipment vendors, facing both opportunities and threats in a new world, virtualisation is highly disruptive and worrying. It is both natural and understandable that companies that built multi-billion dollar businesses on selling hardware will find it difficult to really think through what they are doing. But whatever they do do, they must not lose sight of the needs of the end customer.
As Chris Lichko says, vendors must embrace NFV and accept that the world where customers bought different boxes from different vendors to solve specific problems is as dead as the dodo. It cannot continue to exist unless the model of the truly universal CPE is completely open.
That is very hard for vendors to come to terms with but it is the way the whole world is going and those that cannot adapt will fall by the wayside. The fact is that customers do not want to be dependent on a single vendor. Period

Filmed at:  Zero Touch & Carrier Automation Congress, 2018, Madrid, Spain