The telephone network as we’ve known it is on the way out, obviously. Its replacement is a somewhat smarter Internet Protocol network. One part of the transformation is “CORD”:

It’s time to add another acronym to the telecom lexicon: CORD, for “central office re-architected as data center.”

The idea behind CORD is to use software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) to “transform . . . carrier functions into workloads that are hosted on common, commodity infrastructure,” explains an industry group that has collaborated on a CORD demo that will be demonstrated at next week’s Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, Calif.

Read more: Central Office Transformation: CORD Demo on Tap – Telecompetitor