Here are the top stories SDxCentral wrangled this week related to SDN, NFV, cloud, and virtualization infrastructure:

Q&A with Arpit Joshipura, Head of Networking for The Linux Foundation — He needs to harmonize all the different Linux Foundation open source groups that are working on aspects of network virtualization.

Open-O and OSM Do Not Compete, Insists Chairman of ETSI ISG NFV — The ETSI group hosted its first Plugtest this week in Spain.

Cisco Brings the Infrastructure, AppDynamics Brings the Analytics — Cisco is an AppDynamics customer, which laid some of the groundwork for the surprising $3.9 billion acquisition.

Here are the week’s strays and stragglers we roped for you:

Ericsson will support service providers that deploy OpenECOMP and work with AT&T to encourage industry alignment.

Huawei and Red Hat are expanding their cooperation to include public and NFV clouds. The announcement expands upon previously announced collaborations between both companies to deliver OpenStack-based systems and carrier-grade software-defined networking (SDN) systems.

Cisco created the Innovation Alliance in Germany to partner with with systems integrators, software developers, managed service providers, distributors, and consultants.

Apple has joined the Partnership on AI as a founding member. Amazon, DeepMind/Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft created the non-profit organization to advance public understanding of artificial intelligence technologies (AI).

Nokia has created a customized digital assistant meant to improve telecom operators' efficiency by providing engineers faster access to information.

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) announced the executives who are serving as officers on the 2017 Board of Directors, along with nine new and re-appointed board members.

Panzura announced an expansion in functionality and services to meet the increasingly large enterprise demand for hybrid cloud storage.

Rift.io and Accedian have launched a joint system to deliver network functions virtualization (NFV)-ready network performance monitoring.

Ciena announced that François Locoh-Donou will step down as senior vice president and COO, effective on or about March 23.

Sardina Systems announced support for the OpenStack Newton release, while promising a zero-downtime feature for the new release.

Cumulocity announced a partnership combining its Internet of Things (IoT) platform and Quark IOE’s enterprise communications expertise to form an IoT environment for China.

Brocade announced that Finnish company Ficolo is using the company's VDX switches and VCS fabric.

Here are the other stories SDxCentral covered this week: