This book shines a spotlight on software-centric networks and their emerging service environments. The authors examine the road ahead for connectivity, for both humans and 'things', considering the rapid changes that have shaken the industry.

The book analyses major catalytic shifts that are shaping the communications world: softwarization, virtualization, and cloud computing. It guides the reader through a maze of possible architectural choices, driven by discriminating and sometimes conflicting business considerations. The new ICT capabilities lead us toward smarter environments and to an ecosystem where applications are backed up by shared networking facilities, instead of networks that support their own applications. Growing user awareness is a key driver towards the softwarization process.

Softwarization disrupts the current status quo for equipment, development, networks, operations and business. It changes radically the value chain and the involved stakeholders.The dilemma is between a 'slow burn' traditional step-by-step approach and a bold transformation of the whole infrastructure and business models. This book is essential reading for those seeking to build user-centric communication networks that support independent agile and smart applications.

"The book gives an insightful account of modern telecom networks, pinpointing the radical transformations of the last 20 years. This is the perfect read for those who are interested in the grand challenges of networks and in the socio-economic reasons why the telecom industry to embrace the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems."

Prof. Antonio Liotta, Eindhoven University of Technology

"This book fulfills an urgent need to thoroughly analyze the entanglement of network and software architectures by taking into account the increasing softwarization. It highlights important issues behind today's business models and opens the road for sustainable future approaches to provide user appreciated valuable services."

Dr. Eng. Hendrik Berndt, former CTO of NTT DOCOMO Communications Laboratories Europe

Autorentext
Noël Crespi holds Masters degrees from the Universities of Orsay and Canterbury, a Diplome d'ingénieur from Telecom ParisTech and a Ph.D and Habilitation from Paris VI University. From 1993-95 he worked at CLIP, Bouygues Telecom, before joining France Telecom R&D in 1995 where he was involved in Intelligent Network paradigms for value added services. For Orange he led the Mobicarte prepaid service project to define, architect and deploy an infrastructure that hosted more than 10 million mobile subscribers. He has played a key role in standardisation as a delegate in a number of committees and as the editor for CAMEL, the Intelligent Network standard for mobile networks. He was appointed as the coordinator for France Telecom's standardisation activities for Core Network and then for all GSM/UMTS standards at the ETSI plenary committee.
In 1999, he joined Nortel Networks as telephony programme manager for France and Middle East-Africa. He was responsible for the evolution of the switching area, and led key programmes for the evolution of Nortel products. He has also worked for ETSI as an independent contractor. He joined Institut Mines-Telecom in 2002 and is currently Professor and MSc Programme Director, leading the Service Architecture Laboratory. He coordinates the standardisation activities for Institut Telecom at ETSI, 3GPP and ITU-T. He is also adjunct professor at KAIST (Korea), and is on the 4-person Scientific Advisory Board of FTW (Austria). His current research interests are in Service Architectures, Communication Services, Social Networks, and Internet of Things/Services. He is the author/co-author of 250 articles and contributions in standardisation Roberto Minerva, has a Master Degree in Computer Science from Bari University, Italy, and a Ph.D in computer Science and Telecommunications from Telecom Sud Paris, France. Roberto is the head of Innovative Architectures group within the Future Centre in the Strategy Department of Telecom Italia. His jobis to create advanced scenarios derived from the application of emerging ICT technologieswith innovative business models especially in the area of IoT, distributed computing, programmable networks and personal data. He held many responsibilities within Telecom Italia Lab: Network Intelligence, Wireless Architecture and Business Services Area Manager.Roberto is also a contract Professor at Turin's Polytechnics teaching a course on mobile services. Roberto is the Chairman of the IEEE IoT Initiative aiming at creating within IEEE a large technical community and to leverage the knowledge and skills available within IEEE. Since 1987 he has been involved in the development of Service Architectures for Telecom (TINA, OSA/Parlay and SIP), inactivities related to IMS, and in the definition of services for the Business market (context-awareness, ambient intelligence and automotive). More recently his contribution is in the area of new architectures for the service provision with particular attention to data centric and user centric solutions. Under this perspective he is currently involved in Telecom Italia activities related to Big Data, architecture for IoT, and ICT technologies for leveraging Cultural Heritage.

Inhalt
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Background: Services, Control Paradigms, and Network Architectures.- Chapter 3. Technological Evolution of the ICT Sector.- Chapter 4. The New Networks.- Chapter 5. Emerging Service and Applications Scenarios.- Chapter 6. How the TelCos Sustain their Connectivity based Business Model in the Wave of Disruption Generated by the Technological Evolution.