Intelligent architectures enabling flexible service provision and adaptability
Athanassia Alonistioti, Nikos Houssos, Spyros Panagiotakis, Maria Koutsopoulou, Vangelis Gazis · 2004
The evolution of mobile communication systems to 3G and beyond introduces a new era in advanced multimedia service provision to mobile users. The success of next generation networks is highly dependent on the availability of a plethora of functionality-rich applications, accessible via a variety of network infrastructures and terminals. This vision can be realized only through the cooperation of various business players (e.g., application developers, content providers), in addition to the mobile operator. The specification by major standardization organizations of open APIs for network access by third parties is a significant step towards this direction. However, the road to a dynamic, open environment includes major further challenges like taming the unprecedented complexity of service management that spans multiple domains and the introduction of network and systems that are dynamically reconfigurable and adaptive in order to accommodate service delivery over highly diverse contexts. In this paper we first identify the requirements of service provision in next generation networks with a particular focus on the emerging need for network reconfigurability and we proceed to describe a software framework for advanced service deployment and management as well as propose the extension of standardized open APIs for reconfigurability support.