5 4 delivery model. The key drivers causing this requirement are the same ones many other government agencies and private sector companies face: improving operational availability, realigning personnel to higher value tasks and driving out costs. The need to provision and scale networks rapidly, while also adapting in real-time to changing operational requirements that can no longer be delivered using traditional methods, is increasing the demand for innovative solutions. Commercial network providers have already addressed these transformation drivers. AT&T has invested $140 billion in its global network over the last five years. It works with companies in all major industries, including nearly all of the Fortune 1000. The DoD needs to make better use of this foundational piece of critical infrastructure. The age of the private, purpose-built network is past. There has been a 250,000 percent increase in data traffic over the AT&T network in the past decade. Today the daily average is 197 petabytes per day. No organization can keep up with that tidal surge by throwing servers and routers at the challenge. Network carriers around the globe have moved decisively to software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) to address modern data networking needs. In legacy networks, routers and other network devices are managed individually, with the focus on devices rather than applications. SDN abstracts the control plane from individual devices, giving administrators end-to-end visibility of network flows and the power to optimize traffic paths via policy, rather than hardware. LEADING THE FUTURE $140B in our networks—more than any other public company. From 2012 to 2016, AT&T invested more than