Adam Broadbent’s research while affiliated with British Telecom and other places

The emergence of widespread cloudification and virtualisation promises increased flexibility, scalability, and programmability for the deployment of services by Vertical Service Providers (VSPs). This cloudification also improves service and network management, reducing the Capital and Operational Expenses (CAPEX, OPEX). A truly cloud-native approach is essential, since 5G will provide a diverse range of services - many requiring stringent performance guarantees while maximising flexibility and agility despite the technological diversity. This paper proposes a workflow based on the principles of build-to-order, Build-Ship-Run, and automation; following the Next Generation Platform as a Service (NGPaaS) vision. Through the concept of Reusable Functional Blocks (RFBs), an enhancement to Virtual Network Functions, this methodology allows a VSP to deploy and manage platforms and services, agnostic to the underlying technologies, protocols, and APIs. To validate the proposed workflow, a use case is also presented herein, which illustrates both the deployment of the underlying platform by the Telco operator and of the services that run on top of it. In this use case, the NGPaaS operator facilitates a VSP to provide Virtual Network Function as a Service (VNFaaS) capabilities for its end customers.

Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) systems offer customers a rich environment in which to build, deploy, and run applications. Today's PaaS offerings are tailored mainly to the needs of web and mobile applications developers, and involve a fairly rigid stack of components and features. The vision of the H2020 5GPPP Phase 2 Next Generation Platform-as-a-Service (NGPaaS) project is to enable "build-to-order" customized PaaSs, tailored to the needs of a wide range of use cases with telco-grade 5G characteristics. This paper sets out the salient and innovative features of NGPaaS and explores the impacts on Operational Support Systems and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS), moving from fixed centralized stacks to a much more flexible and modular distributed architecture.

5G standard emerges at a particular time in technology history when cloud transforms deeply almost all industries and services: it becomes obvious that innovations have to be made cloud-native for being successful. 5G must become the ubiquitous fabric blending universal connectivity (to humans, robots, sensors…) with cloud versatility and scalability. For realizing this vision, another model than IaaS must be adopted, the Platform as a Service (PaaS), which should be built to support telco-grade requirements and combine all sort of third-party applications. These are the core objectives of the Next Generation Platform as a Service (NGPaaS) project, a H2020 5G PPP Phase 2 project. The paper presents the project fundamentals, its architectural proposal and most relevant features.