Validation of IaaS-based technologies for 5G-ready applications deployment

In an attempt to assess the suitability of current Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) technologies for fulfilling 5G-ready applications requirements, this paper has exploited the CNIT S2N testbed to perform a validation over a complete 5G ecosystem. The testbed supports the telecom network platform developed within the MATILDA Project, which adopts the vanilla versions of the main reference projects/software suites in the 5G field, such as OpenStack and Open-Source MANO (OSM). By including such familiar technologies in the 5G ecosystem, vertical industries would interact with a familiar environment similar to today's scenarios, which would lower the barrier for creating 5G-ready applications. However, results show that current solutions are blamable for around 99% of the deployment time of applications and network slices, a figure that bumps their lifecycle up to the order of magnitude of minutes proving them still not suitable to fulfill 5G requirements.