MSOFSEN 2013 - 1st Workshop on Managing Stability and Orchestration in Future Software Empowered Networks

Today, to launch new network services is becoming complex and expensive, often inhibiting the rapid roll out of new revenue earning. Looking at the future, this is an important bottleneck to be overcome. Besides, future networks should also be able to reduce operational and capital expenditures (OPEX and CAPEX): OPEX reduction can be achieved by easing human operators (and reducing human mistakes) in managing and configuring automatically equipments and network functionalities; CAPEX reduction can be achieved for example by postponing network resources investments (e.g. optimized use of available resources). These requirements impose re-defining the management and control of future network: one of the key aspects will be deploying into network equipments ? and/or in the
management control systems ? several "control loops" capable of load balancing, traffic engineering, optimized allocations, resources negotiations, service deployment, etc. A concrete example of this is the SON (Self-Organizing Network) mechanisms that are developed for LTE radio access networks aiming at: coverage and capacity Optimization, energy saving, interference coordination, mobility load balancing, etc. Furthermore, some emerging concepts and technologies for future networks, such as Software-Defined/Driven Networks, Network Clouds and Software Empowered Networks will enable the deployment and multiplication of such control loops in all segments of operator networks. These control loops can be developed, independently, by different players: equipment vendors, network
operators, management software providers, etc. However, the introduction of independently developed control loops, which behave as “constrained optimizations” solvers, can create instabilities due to unwanted couplings or interactions. This will have primary effects such as jeopardizing dramatically the performance and compromising an optimized use of resources. Therefore, ensuring stability and orchestration within a strategic asset like a network of ICT resources is of paramount
importance in future operator networks and service infrastructures. This implies the need of coordination and orchestration of control loops that must be designed, proved and tested before large-scale deployment.