On the viability of a CSO architecture for on-demand virtualized cloud planning and provisioning

As bandwidth requirements and computing capacity for future applications have been predicted to exceed current network and IT infrastructure capabilities, providers face the need to adapt their provisioning models. This article presents the benefits of Cross Stratum Optimized architectures (provision of network and IT resources in a coordinated way) in support of Cloud-based applications. We also present the architecture's potential impact and benefits for operators, based on MACTOR methodology. MACTOR results show the interactions among value-chain actors and identify their business convergences and divergences, revealing the architecture feasibility.