Workshop Motivation and Background

This workshop addresses the three main topics that are significant for the realization of the Future Internet Architecture, which are the Mobile Networking, Network Function Virtualization and Service Virtualization.

While mobile communication networks have been established decades ago and are still continuously evolving, cloud computing and cloud services became a hot topic in recent years and is expected to have significant impact on novel applications as well as on ICT infrastructures. Cloud computing and mobile communication networks have been considered separate from each other in the past. However, there are various possible synergies between them. This trend supports the use of cloud computing infrastructures as processing platforms for signal and protocol processing of mobile communication networks, in particular for current (4G) and future (5G) generation networks. This enables several opportunities to optimize performance of cloud applications and services observed by mobile users, whose devices are connected to the cloud via wireless access networks. This trend is also in line with the emerging ETSI activities in Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). The “Mobile Cloud Infrastructures and Services” workshop focuses on the thematic area that the EU project MCN is concentrating on and is addressing emerging technologies in cloud services and mobile communication infrastructures. Emphasis will be put on possible integration scenarios and synergies between them.

Workshop Structure
Based on the successful format of the FUNEMS 2013, “Mobile Cloud Networking and Edge ICT “ workshop, we plan to have a good mix of invited keynote talks from key participants in the EU FP7 projects MCN, iJOIN, CONENT and FLAMINGO and peer-reviewed abstracts of the papers to be presented. Moreover, the panel organized in 2013 was highly appreciated by the participants and therefore is proposed to be part of the program in 2014. The speakers of the workshop will form the panel. During the panel session, the presented papers will be used as the starting point for the panel discussions. The programme associated with this workshop is as follows:

Mobile Cloud Infrastructures and Services session (200 minutes + 30 minutes break), Chair Thomas Michael Bohnert (Zurich University of Applied Sciences)

• Thomas Michael Bohnert (Zurich University of Applied Sciences), Welcome speech: EU FP7 Mobile Cloud Networking (MCN) (15 minutes)
• Anna Tzanakaki (University of Bristol) (Invited paper), Title of invited speech: “EU FP7 CONTENT: Virtualizing converged network infrastructures in support of mobile cloud services” (15 minutes)
• Peter Rost (NEC) (Invited paper), Title of invited speech: “EU FP7 iJOIN: Benefits and challenges of cloud technologies for ‘5G” (15 minutes)
• Filip De Turck (University of Gent) (Invited paper), Title of invited speech: “EU FP7 FLAMINGO: Network monitoring in virtualized environments” (15 minutes)
• Joao Soares (Portugal Telecom Inovacao), Andy Edmonds (Zurich University of Applied Sciences), Giada Landi (Nextworks), Luigi Grossi (Telecom Italia), Julius Mueller (Fraunhofer FOKUS), Frank Zdarsky (NEC Laboratories Europe), Title of presentation: “Cloud computing and SDN networking for end to end virtualization in cloud-based LTE systems” (20 minutes)
• Desislava Dimitrova (University of Bern), Lucio S. Ferreira (INOV-INESC | IST), André Gomes (University of Bern | One Source, Consultoria Informática Lda.), Navid Nikaein (EURECOM), Alexander Georgiev (CloudSigma), Anna Pizzinat (Orange), Title of presentation: “Challenges ahead of RAN virtualization” (20 minutes)

Coffee Break (30 minutes)

• Tarik Taleb (NEC Laboratories Europe), Marius Corici (Fraunhofer FOKUS), Carlos Parada (Portugal Telecom Inovacao), Almerima Jamakovic (University of Bern), Simone Ruffino (Telecom Italia), Georgios Karagiannis (University of Twente), Morteza Karimzadeh (University of Twente), Thomas Magedanz (Fraunhofer FOKUS), Title of presentation: “Virtualizing the LTE Evolved Packet Core (EPC)” (20 minutes)
• André Gomes (University of Bern | One Source, Consultoria Informática Lda.), Santiago Ruiz (Soft Telecom), Giuseppe Carella (TU Berlin / Fraunhofer FOKUS), Paolo Comi (Italtel), Paolo Secondo Crosta (Italtel), Title of presentation: “Cloud-based Orchestration of Multimedia Services and Applications” (20 minutes)

Panel discussions (60 minutes)

Previous Editions

The previous edition of this workshop was entitled: “Mobile Cloud Networking and Edge ICT Services”, and it has been organized during the FUNEMS 2013, http://www.futurenetworksummit.eu/2013/. The duration of the workshop was half a day and has been organised in two sessions. The current edition of this workshop will focus mainly only on one of these sessions, “Mobile Cloud Infrastructures and Services”. The workshop was successful and attracted a relatively high number of attendees compared to other parallel workshops. 25- 50 participants have been permanently in the room at the Mobile Cloud Networking and Edge ICT Services 2013.

Workshop Audience

The target audience will be the telecommunication infrastructures and cloud computing research and industry communities, with an emphasis on European FP7 project involved researchers and organizations. The workshop organizers are participating among others in the EU FP7 IP projects: Mobile Cloud Networking (MCN), CONTENT, iJOIN, FLAMINGO and in Standardization Bodies such as Open Networking Foundation and ETSI NFV (Network Function Virtualisation). It is therefore expected that a significant part of the audience and participants will be the communities involved in Standardization Bodies such as Open Networking Foundation and ETSI NFV and the EU FP7 projects that are and will be cooperating with the EU FP7 IP project “Mobile Cloud Networking” (MCN).