QoS-aware elastic cloud brokering for IMS infrastructures

Cloud computing management supports are becoming more and more important not only in the fields of IT infrastructures for Internet applications and services, but steadily also in the field of telecommunication services and infrastructures. More and more telecommunication service providers have adopted IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) to consolidate their service infrastructures towards converged, all-IP, access network independent Next Generation Networks (NGNs). Although modern NGN service environments have the potential to greatly reduce new telecommunication services time-to-market, until now significant upfront investments into computational resources are required, that is still often a risk for the enterprise, with unsure return on invest. The application of cloud computing technologies to IMS-based service infrastructures enables new pay-per-use cost models, so IMS service providers may be charged for what they use only, significantly lowering the risk of bad investments. This work presents the design and implementation of a cloud brokering system for IMS services, capable of simultaneously interworking with multiple cloud infrastructures. We developed a Cloud Broker Engine (CBE) able to dynamically up/down-scale cloud resources across multiple cloud platforms. Our CBE is capable of coping with dynamic load situations and QoS requirements optimizing resource utilization across different cloud infrastructures: it enables QoS assurance and optimizes resource consumption across multiple cloud providers.