Efficient Management of Loosely Collaborative Service Networks

The field of service and network management has become extremely challenging due to various scalability issues. The number of network users has grown exponentially while, in parallel, the types of user services have seen massive growth from both traditional providers and the explosion of mobile web 2.0 providers. The appearance of new breed of content and service providers has driven network usage, but also created huge network management problems for the operators. This new collaborative environment merges traditional and new content and service providers, resulting in networks being viewed as a “bit pipe” while end-users expect a stream-lined network connectivity. Fundamental to this new forming eco-system is the emerging need for new approach to interaction and collaborative techniques that break down the traditional departmentalization of communication systems. The emergence of “Over-The-Top” services is just one category that imposes a huge demand on the operators’ network resources. These bandwidth hungry applications, gaming, Skype like video call services are driving fundamental changes in how networks are deployed and managed as well as how they interact with content and service providers.

In this context, content and service providers together with network operators provide value to the subscribers in a “loosely collaborative” fashion. Service assurance in this loose collaborative environment is challenging, particularly in the presence of a network with limited guarantees or no guarantees. Emerging from this new dynamic is the need to examine more open loop models of interaction combined with events from end users, networks and service providers.

In IFIP / IEEE DANMS 2011, we are seeking research contributions in the area areas of automated service assurance and in loosely collaborative service networks. The workshop aims to promote dissemination of new research results in the areas of service and network management in a distributed and autonomous fashion and encourage discussion and networking between researchers in this area, while exposing emerging challenges to the research community and to industrial players. Please visit the Call for Papers page for more details on the topics of interest.

IFIP / IEEE DANMS 2011 is co-located with IM 2011. For previous editions, please visit the Previous DANMS workshops page.