Dave Bolan, research director at Dell’Oro Group, said the flexibility of Nokia’s DelOps effectively extends the reach of operators’ existing network software configurations and reduces complexity. “CI/CD is evolving from a one-solution-for-all in a homogenous environment to multiple solutions for different operators, whether they operate in a public, private, or hybrid cloud,” Bolan wrote in response to questions. “This enables a streamlined introduction of new features and services in a complex telco environment with multiple domains, third-party software, and hybrid-cloud environments, which took longer and was more arduous before.”

The RAN market also surprised on the upside in Europe, with revenues increasing at the fastest pace in seven years across the continent, he said. “We attribute the stronger-than-expected results to a confluence of factors,” he told Fierce. “First and foremost, we underestimated the magnitude and depth of the 5G rollouts, including both sub-6 GHz wide-band and narrow-band 5G.”

Overall, research firm Dell’Oro Group predicts total revenues from operations in CBRS spectrum will increase more than three-fold in the next four years.

“XDR, as an ultimate consumer of telemetry, is going to be trying to grab intelligence from wherever it can, including SASE solutions,” said Mauricio Sanchez, research director for network security and data center at Dell’Oro Group. “I do see that integration happening, beyond a shadow of a doubt, as these SASE solutions mature.” In other words: the pandemic provided a perfect storm for these two buzzy security sectors to collide.