Intent-based Networking for Connectivity and Cloud Services

Recent developments in networking and services technologies increased number of choices for users and complexity of networks and services. At the same time, there is substantial effort in the industry to enhance user experiences with services. The enhancement of user experiences is tightly coupled with mapping of user intents to services by shielding customers from the complexity and automating management processes involved in ordering and delivering services. The mapping is an iterative process. Its accuracy is expected to be improved as Service Providers gain experience with the process. Automating management processes in a management infrastructure with non-virtualized OSSs (Operating Support Systems) is lengthy and difficult. Virtualization and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) techniques accelerate the automation greatly. The automation improves not only user experiences with services, but also the management of networks and applications by network administrators. This paper will describe user intents, a method for mapping user intents to connectivity and cloud services, and the design process, with examples. The concepts and methods described here are expected to be used by consumers and administrators of networks and applications forming services. The intents and their mappings can be expanded for each service by adding unique capabilities and attributes for connectivity and application options of a given service.