INPUT

In-Network Programmability for next generation personal cloUd service support

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Corporate solution providers need to provide radically new products for supporting the quest for new technological requirements.

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For the End-Users: ownership of a multitude of telecom and media related end-devices (CPEs, set-top boxes, MP3 players, video player/recorder, gateways/sensors for energy management, etc.) that are costly, having short-life span as technology evolves and significant environmental impact.

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For the Telecom Operators: lack of a common platform allowing the support of existing and integration of emerging IoT/Cloud highly demanding services (e.g. tactile internet) with short time-to-market (in a cost and energy efficient way) to improve customer experience and increase revenues.

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For the Service Providers: lack of a common framework (standardized APIs/interfaces) to develop/integrate/offer new services to market.

The INPUT Solution

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The INPUT platform is an Edge Computing system, specifically designed to run within NFV-ready Telecom infrastructures to provide Personal Cloud Services in a highly efficient and scalable fashion.

The entire platform has been designed and implemented to provide the following advantages:

Ease in porting of third-party services benefiting from the existence of well-known state-of-the-art cloud interfaces and APIs (i.e., OpenStack-like).
Fully 5G-NFV ready.
Fully autonomous service and infrastructure management.
Advanced power management capabilities (compliant to the ETSI GAL v1 and to the upcoming v2 definitions).

Moreover, the INPUT platform also allows supporting:

Development and provisioning of highly demanding third-party innovative services for vertical markets (e.g. Virtualisation of existing Personal Electronic Devices, Virtualisation of IoT Services in Smart City Scenarios, Digital Content on the Move) in a short time
Ease in integration with Mobile Network Operators and Service Providers through standardized APIs (i.e., OpenStack-like)
Cost and energy efficiency.

The core of the INPUT platform is constituted by the OpenVolcano open-source software realizing flexible SDN-driven Personal Networks (rendering end-user devices unnecessary) capable of hosting third-party Personal Cloud Services in fog/mobile edge computing
facilities.

OpenVolcano provides all the mandatory building blocks to run the base functionalities INPUT Platform.

Further INPUT platform components have been realized upon commercial software products (e.g., the Network and Service Manager module is realized upon the Ericsson Network Manager - see a comprehensive description of the INPUT architecture here), but their deployment is optional.

In any case the interfaces between the open-source and the commercial components have been publicly released and described in this UML file.

The rest of the interfaces have been completely specified in this public report.

In addition to the platform, the INPUT project also designed and implemented:

A use-case IoT application for the remote home management, including a Virtual Object proxy based on the CapeDwarf PaaS.
A use-case multimedia application providing a modular set-top-box with advanced functionalities to be placed in the network edge.
A set of Virtual Network Functions to be used to attach the Edge Computing system between the access and core segments of a 4G mobile networks.

The INPUT platform benefits

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The INPUT platform is a holistic solution enabling the dynamic instantiation of highly demanding personal cloud services by third-parties to end-users with guaranteed QoS/QoE, anywhere, anytime.

To the best of our knowledge, the OpenVolcano software, providing the core functionalities of the INPUT platform, is the first open-source prototype platform for Fog computing.

Alternatives stays only at technological specifications: OpenFog (industrial consortium), ETSI mobile edge computing (standard).

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Telecom Operators (mostly European) – upon availability of a commercial release – which could expand their role in the market value chain by offering:

Personal cloud services to individuals (and increase their ARPU) .
New advanced hosting capabilities to third-party Service Providers.

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Researchers could utilize the INPUT platform (and especially OpenVolcano) as beta-users and contribute to:

Its validation in various scenarios/ various cloud services and
Its roadmap evolution (development of new features) towards commercialization.

Additional benefits

Offering innovative services with short time-to-market.
Energy savings.
Network Softwarization.

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Main responsibilities

Management of T2.2 "Abstraction of the in-network Programmability”.
Management of T3.1 “In-network Programmability”.
Management of D3.1 “First design of in-network programmability functions”.
Management of D3.3 “Final design and prototype of in-network programmability functions”.
Management of T4.2 “Home Entertainment virtual device In-network App implementation”.
Management of D4.4 “Validation and benchmarking of individual and integrated (network wide) INPUT technologies”.

Info	Data
Dimension	9 partners
Reference call	ICT7-2014 - Advanced Cloud Infrastructures and Services
Founding	€ 3.108.001,00 (CNIT: € 527.645,18)
Main roles	Researcher