SLA management and service composition of virtualized applications in mobile networking environments

Cloud computing is a promising solution for the flexible, on-demand delivery of communication services and infrastructures. The European Union funded project Mobile Cloud Networking is developing a cloud-based mobile communication service platform where service providers deliver virtualized wireless infrastructures integrated with high-level applications running on top of them. Mobile networks are redesigned, placed upon and operated on cloud computing platforms. These then are available with the on-demand, elastic and pay-as-you-go characteristics derived from the cloud principles. In this platform, a variety of services including heterogeneous radio networking, federated computing resources, virtualized network functions, support services and high-level applications are automatically and seamlessly orchestrated in composite end-to-end services delivered to enterprise end-users. The management of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for these cloud-based composite services requires a dedicated framework to combine and jointly manage the multiple SLAs associated to the different service components. This paper presents an architecture for the enforcement and validation of SLAs for mobile cloud services, discussing its positioning in the overall mobile cloud networking platform and its role across the different phases of the service lifecycle.