Here are the top news stories the editors of SDxCentral wrangled this week related to software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV):

Verizon Built a Telco Cloud — Hardly anybody knows about this, but Verizon has created a five-data-center telco cloud as the first step in virtualizing its networks, both wired and wireless.

Google Cloud De-Scripts Deployment of Linux Containers — At Google's GCP NEXT conference this week, it introduced a new tool for deploying clusters of Linux containers.

Cumulus Names New CEO — Cumulus Networks founder JR Rivers announced Josh Leslie to succeed him as CEO. Rivers, himself, is taking on the role of chief technology officer.

Kelly Ahuja Will Be the Latest to Leave the Cisco Management Team — Cisco announced a reorganization of its engineering team, leaving Kelly Ahuja, senior vice president of the service provider business, out.

OSM Comes to NFV MANO With Code in Hand - OSM plans to put particular emphasis on developing a common information model for virtual network functions (VNFs).

Here are the other strays and stragglers SDxCentral roped this week:

Docker Inc. launched native Mac and Windows apps in beta.

ContainerX introduced a containers-as-a-service platform for Windows Server applications.

CoreOS updated its Quay Security Scanner for container registries.

AT&T is creating a software-controlled optical switching element — or reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) — to route data traffic that comes in over high-capacity fiber optic lines. The operator says it's already built a nationwide, software-controlled optical network.

ADVA Optical Networking is leading the Silicon Photonics Enabling Exascale Data Networks (SPEED) project to create a platform for manufacturing silicon photonics. Electro-photonic integrated circuits (ePICs) combine electronic and optical functions on a single semiconductor chip and are targeted for ultra-high-speed data center interconnects.

Anuta Networks and Logicalis are partnering with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) on a proof-of-concept (PoC), offering network orchestration to telecommunication customers in Asia Pacific.

The Open Networking User Group (ONUG) teamed up with New York University to create the NYU Open Networking Lab.

ADLINK Technology is offering a pre-integrated NFV platform featuring the Wind River Titanium Server with ADLINK's COTS hardware.

IBM opened a Bluemix garage — a collaboration center for cloud developers — in Nice, France.

Astellia unveiled a software-based load balancer for user plane monitoring, called Flex.

Patton Electronics is working on creating SIP-to-SIP call-control and media-gateway capabilities of a session border controller implemented as virtualized network functions (VNFs).

SevOne signed a partnership to be a monitoring option for Viptela's software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WANs).

IHS reported that the data center networking equipment market grew 6 percent in 2015, to $11.8 billion.

And here are the other stories SDxCentral covered this week: