NECOS

A unique service provider sometimes owns the data centers supporting the cloud, but there is a trend to a fully distributed architecture, where several data center providers will have to cooperate through the interconnection of their computation and storage infrastructure. The interconnection network is a fundamental part in the performance of such a distributed cloud environment. As different services require different computing and storage capabilities, they also require different performance parameters related to the network, like bandwidth, delay or jitter. Allocating resources from different data centers and their interconnecting network systems to satisfy the needs of heterogeneous service requests and all in an automated and efficient manner is a challenge that current cloud computing platforms are not able to fulfill.

The NECOS project addresses the limitations of current cloud computing infrastructures to respond to the demand of new services, as presented in two use-cases that will drive the whole execution of the project. The first use-case is Telco service provider focused and is oriented towards the adoption of cloud computing in their large networks. The second use-case is targeting the use of edge clouds to support devices with low computation and storage capacity. The envisaged solution is based on a new concept – Lightweight Slice Defined Cloud (LSDC) – as an approach that extends the virtualization to all the resources in the involved networks and data centres and provides a uniform management with a high-level of orchestration.