The growth in multimedia content access by subscribers in mobile and fixed-line networks is expanding rapidly. At the same time, network operators must counter the challenge from Internet content providers that are vying for their subscribers, Software-Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualization are emerging as key technologies to compete with Internet content providers to manage, optimize and monetize data plane services. To achieve this vision, high-throughput NFV-aware load balancing with SDN control will be required between the packet flows generated by millions of subscribers. These flows will need to be directed to thousands of virtualized functions hosted in next-generation data centers.