So says Stephanie Gibbons, principal analyst for carrier network software at Light Reading sister company Omdia. Despite the concerns over COVID-19, Gibbons said operators must continue 5G investments, including in SDN and NFV implementations. Outlook cloudy: Cloud native network infrastructure continues to be vital to 5G. (Source: Unsplash) In the report "2021 Trends to Watch: Carrier Network Software," Gibbons said operators are continuing to deploy carrier network software for network automation. "Over the last two years, ensuring that this automation provides unified 'end-to-end' management has become critical," she said. Omdia said that 96% of carriers have either deployed or plan to deploy network functions virtualization (NFV) in 2020, while 50% have deployed or plan to deploy carrier software-defined networks (SDN).