CenturyLink's Kevin McBride says the telecom industry is past the hype cycle for cloud, SDN and NFV and into the actualization period of network virtualization – which is where automation is key."We went through the hype cycle of this and we're finally coming down that hill in the whole development cycle that we all live through in technology and getting into actuality," says McBride, principal architect of SDN & NFV technologies at CenturyLink. "It's fun to talk about how we marry NFV and cloud to the network and the secret sauce is automation."McBride will dive deeper into a discussion on how automation will be foundational to furthering service provider's digital transformations, and to delivering on-demand services to customers at Light Reading's Automation Everywhere event on Wednesday, April 4 in Dallas. In addition to his afternoon keynote, McBride will be speaking on two panels: "Autonomous Network Ingredients -- Maturity and Adoption," and "What Telcos Can Learn about Automation from Other Industries.""The basics of this transformation is moving to a data-driven network," says McBride. "I want to talk about how automation is gluing together a data-driven network, going into big data and how that is going to accelerate deployments within a carrier or service provider network -- why it's important for us to be at this conference. On top of that, the CenturyLink angle is how automation is going to create this new service platform of digital transformation."Light Reading is bringing together all of the key players in the automation revolution for the first time at Automation Everywhere on April 4 in Dallas. Join us as we tackle the business and technology challenges behind driving network automation. The event is free for communications service providers -- register today!In order to continue delivering real-time business services to customers with faster service activation times, McBride says operators have to increase operational agility, time to market with new services and utilize open interfaces. During his keynote, McBride plans to discuss CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL)'s efforts around open interface development, particularly in optical wave services."The transformation of the telco infrastructure is like the Amazon, Azure and CenturyLink cloud infrastructures -- exposed API with the ability to consume and write your own services on top of it."Automation and the adoption of artificial intelligence capabilities will be key to handling network requests -- from both humans and machines -- across CenturyLink's OSS/BSS systems and to providing an on-demand services platform, he adds."We know that cloud meets network is going to work and this transformation is occurring and to make it occur correctly we have to have automation on top," continues McBride. "We've always called out orchestration, but it's beyond orchestration. We have to get rid of the human involvement in any decision-making in the network."To hear Kevin McBride's full keynote in-person, and to learn from and network with speakers at Verizon, Telstra, Windstream, PCCW Global, CableLabs, TM Forum and more, register for Automation Everywhere on April 4 in Dallas here.Related posts:Big Data Is on CenturyLink's 'Automation' Wish ListTelstra's Fagan: Automation Key to AI, IOT, Cloud & MoreCenturyLink CEO: Automation Key to Improved Customer Experience