Guest Editors' Introduction: Special Section on Novel Techniques for Managing Softwarized Networks

The softwarization of networks is enabled by the SDN (Software-Defined Networking), NV (Network Virtualization), and NFV (Network Function Virtualization) paradigms, and offers many advantages for network operators, service providers and datacenter providers. Given the strong interest in both industry and academia in the softwarization of telecommunication networks and cloud computing infrastructures, a series of special section was established in IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, which aims at the timely publication of recent innovative research results on management of softwarized networks.