Agile service manager for 5G

Abstract

This paper presents an underlying framework to support and accelerate the production of applications and services in the context of programmable networks (SDN and NFV, clouds). The proposed framework addresses moreover the 5G KPI of “reducing the average service creation time from 90 hours to 90 minutes” as declared by 5G-PPP association in the early of 2015 among other KPIs. The proposed framework relies on SDN, NFV and Cloud principles and technologies and proposes extensions towards the end to end abstraction that is required for automation of service production. A Service Manager Architecture fulfilling the agility, acceleration and automation requirements is presented along with its relationships and interfaces with the applications and network levels. An application requiring network services, expressed in a network service descriptor, is used to illustrate the architecture usage and benefits and highlights the remaining future research needs and trails.