About the telco cloud management architectures

Abstract

In order to achieve the expected benefits provided by network function virtualization and software defined networks, the key role is placed on management and orchestration functionality with goal to automate services provider business processes. Network function virtualization and software defined networks establish new requirements upon network management systems which demand a change of existing management architectures and currently implemented management systems. The biggest challenge is to achieve unified multivendor monitoring and management for both virtualized and non-virtualized networks. To address these new requirements and enable further evolution and implementation of virtualized software networks, there is a clear need to define common framework and agree upon common information model between different currently available standards defined by many different standardization bodies. The paper contains the overview of currently available important standards in the area of telecom cloud management as well as their short analysis with focus on network and services assurance systems - alarm monitoring and management, performance management, inventory management and service quality management. These are compared with today existing management architectures and systems in order to identify challenges and define requirements that will further drive the solutions in respect to new standardized framework. There are also some improvement guidelines for further considerations of management architectures.