The metro is a growing hotbed of activities, services, and revenue opportunities in networks worldwide. It provides end users with access to a wide range of differentiated services. Over the next 3-5 years dramatic transformations will take place. Major inflection points within the metro will be influenced by Cable Distributed Access Architecture (DAA), 5G , content hosting, and distributed cloud. These inflections will drive upgrades in both the packet and optical domains. The metro will become a service Fabric unifying Ethernet, cable, broadband, mobile, and cloud-based offerings into a single control domain. Operations need to be automated to dynamically address shifting demands in networks. This session will discuss the above trends and technologies in an open framework for both packet and optical domains in a relentless march towards automated metro networks.