CenturyLink, Inc. added Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) services to its Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN) III contract with the US Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program (DoD HPCMP). CenturyLink will provide a secure research and development, production-like environment for the implementation of SDN and NFV services at DREN sites, which will be some of the first DoD sites to adopt these services. This project will establish the necessary security standards for the agency to use in its own implementation of SDN and NFV, which is the future of network infrastructure. SDN and NFV implementation will also help DoD move beyond traditional network technologies into a more dynamic, scalable software workload that allows the agency to more easily add new on-demand services and additional capacity. All applications--including multi-label protocol switching, firewall, encryption and orchestration services-will run on software instead of costly hardware, thus speeding up the testing and review of applications. The project will also help reduce the number of network devices DoD has to buy and manage.