Goal-oriented Policies for Self-management (GOPS)

High costs for network deployment and operation are a major concern for operators, vendors/developers, enterprise IT departments and telecom/IT outsourcing providers. Each time a new service is developed, the service provider must plan for its integration into an existing service infrastructure, with its underlying network capabilities and its management system. In order to help reduce the total cost of operation, highly-dynamic service and network infrastructures must enjoy enhanced management capabilities in comparison with today’s infrastructures.

This project investigates policy-based service management in future self-organising network infrastructures. Our aim is to bridge the gap between higher-level business and service management and lower-level system policies. The former are declarative, stating what needs to happen, and relate directly to service specifications. The latter define the operational constraints for self-managed components. In between these two policy types there is a policy continuum, with its own policy languages and policy refinement methods.

This project is funded by VINNOVA and supported by Ericsson.