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Software networks are universally recognized among network operators as a necessary investment to be technically ready and positioned for future 5G networks and, consequently, they are progressively embracing the shift to virtualization. In 2016, mainly thanks to both the maturity of open source projects and the initial deployments ran by major service providers, they accelerated their investments on the softwarisation of their networks. During the last two years, the market has seen trials, proofs of concept (PoC) and demonstrations showing some early and small-scale success stories.

SONATA hosted recently in Madrid a workshop on Zero-Touch Network Service Management (ZTNSM), with the participation of representatives of more than twenty organizations, from industry and academia. This workshop was a result of an ongoing discussion within the network management community about how to leverage the new Software Network technologies to increase network management automation, and address the challenges that the advent of 5G will bring.

In the developing scenarios of 5G software networks and network service management, several actors have emerged with their proposed implementation of ETSI MANO (Network Functions Virtualization Management and Orchestration) framework, able to manage, orchestrate, and operate multiple instances of complex virtual network services, optimise the physical and virtual resources allocated to different actors and users, and resolve conflicts that may arise among such actors during service operation.

The recent advances in cloud computing are leveraging the design of flexible and programmable virtual network infrastructures as a key enabler of future 5G networks. The SONATA SDK simplifies the workflow of service programmability by providing a set of tools to assist the user in designing and composing network services. Currently, the following SDK features can be highlighted:

Network services are a combination of application and network functions. They offer an end-to-end process while supporting and securing complex data flows. The SDN revolution is shaking up the network infrastructure, but the complexity of the network services is growing up alongside.

In the next years, 5G infrastructure will become a ubiquitous, flexible, broadband and programmable network that will be in the core of every social, business, and cultural process, enabling both economic growth and social prosperity.

The softwarization and virtualization of networks and network functions have elevated the complexity of securing networks by another notch. The security of the complete lifecycle of NFV based network services has to be revised and accounted for in order to address their basic security needs and, as a consequence, ensure their functioning.

Containers, like Docker, are a virtualisation technology that is rapidly gaining ground and is expected to have a great impact in the future deployments of cloud technologies and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV). Containers virtualise the OS, making it possible to deploy multiple container-based applications on top of it. Because of this ability, they are very popular in the DevOps movement, as it makes it very fast to build, test and deploy applications.