Upskill U launches a new series this week on Network Transformation, beginning Wednesday with a session delivered by Toby Ford, assistant vice president of Cloud Technology, Strategy & Planning for AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), and keynote speaker at Light Reading's 2016 Big Communications Event.

Fundamental to the move to virtualization, management and orchestration (MANO) continues to pose a challenge to service providers as they transition from legacy equipment to virtual machines. In his course "MANO 101," Ford will cover the three functional blocks of network functions virtualization (NFV) MANO, strategies for integration with open APIs, best practices for utilizing key technologies in MANO and successful MANO case studies. (Register for MANO 101.)

Figure 1:Toby Ford, AT&T, delivered a keynote at BCE 2016 and will present the first course in Upskill U's series on Network Transformation.

Since outspoken industry thought leader Margaret Chiosi retired from AT&T, Ford has been leading the MANO charge at AT&T, so this is one lecture you don't want to miss. (See AT&T: OPNFV Can Bring Open Source Sanity.)

Upskill yourself on Network Transformation & SDN with our new Upskill U online university! Sign up for our free course with AT&T today!

The two-part series on Network Transformation continues Friday at 1:00 p.m. ET as James Crawshaw, senior analyst of OSS/BSS Transformation for Heavy Reading, examines the growing role of open source in NFV MANO, and identifies how operators can successfully implement open source in their NFV strategies. (Register for Open Source for NFV MANO.)

Next week, Upskill U kicks off a new four-part series on software-defined networking (SDN) with expert lecturers from AT&T, Orange Business Services, Equinix and more. During the SDN series, Upskill U listeners will hear from one of the university's faculty advisors, Chris Rice, senior vice president of Domain 2.0 Architecture & Design for AT&T Labs, for the first time in a session on open source solutions for SDN. Listeners will also learn about key SDN concepts, the role of SDN in data center evolution, and the effect of SDN on IP and optical integration.

Register today for these exciting new courses on SDN at Upskill U:

Don't miss these opportunities to not only boost your knowledge about NFV MANO and SDN, but also to ask industry experts your pressing questions. Each 45-minute course is recorded and archived so you can revisit sessions any time. I'll see you on the chat boards! (See Upskill U Curriculum Calendar)

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, editor, Upskill U