{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,9]],"date-time":"2026-03-09T08:01:58Z","timestamp":1773043318201,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":37,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,21]],"date-time":"2019-05-21T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1558396800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100010661","name":"Horizon 2020 Framework Programme","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["761557"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["761557"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100010661","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Future Internet"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The emergence of widespread cloudification and virtualisation promises increased flexibility, scalability, and programmability for the deployment of services by Vertical Service Providers (VSPs). This cloudification also improves service and network management, reducing the Capital and Operational Expenses (CAPEX, OPEX). A truly cloud-native approach is essential, since 5G will provide a diverse range of services - many requiring stringent performance guarantees while maximising flexibility and agility despite the technological diversity. This paper proposes a workflow based on the principles of build-to-order, Build-Ship-Run, and automation; following the Next Generation Platform as a Service (NGPaaS) vision. Through the concept of Reusable Functional Blocks (RFBs), an enhancement to Virtual Network Functions, this methodology allows a VSP to deploy and manage platforms and services, agnostic to the underlying technologies, protocols, and APIs. To validate the proposed workflow, a use case is also presented herein, which illustrates both the deployment of the underlying platform by the Telco operator and of the services that run on top of it. In this use case, the NGPaaS operator facilitates a VSP to provide Virtual Network Function as a Service (VNFaaS) capabilities for its end customers.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/fi11050119","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,21]],"date-time":"2019-05-21T10:52:51Z","timestamp":1558435971000},"page":"119","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":9,"title":["The Next Generation Platform as A Service: Composition and Deployment of Platforms and Services"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"11","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6238-3858","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Angelos","family":"Mimidis-Kentis","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Photonics, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7729-6976","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jose","family":"Soler","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Photonics, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1775-3450","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Paul","family":"Veitch","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"British Telecom, Ipswich IP53RE, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Adam","family":"Broadbent","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"British Telecom, Ipswich IP53RE, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3499-0159","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Marco","family":"Mobilio","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Informatics, University of Milano Bicocca, 20125 Milano, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2120-2894","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Oliviero","family":"Riganelli","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Informatics, University of Milano Bicocca, 20125 Milano, Italy"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7160-3541","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Steven","family":"Van Rossem","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IMEC, University of Ghent, 9000 Ghent, Belgium"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Wouter","family":"Tavernier","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"IMEC, University of Ghent, 9000 Ghent, Belgium"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Bessem","family":"Sayadi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Nokia Bell Labs France, 91620 Nozay, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Erfanian, J., and Smith, B. (2019, May 19). Network Functions Virtualisation\u2014White Paper on NFV Priorities for 5G. Available online: https:\/\/portal.etsi.org\/NFV\/NFV_White_Paper_5G.pdf."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"28","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2017.1600907","article-title":"The Unavoidable Convergence of NFV, 5G, and Fog: A Model-Driven Approach to Bridge Cloud and Edge","volume":"55","author":"Yannuzzi","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Van Rossem, S., Sayadi, B., Roullet, L., Mimidis, A., Paolino, M., Veitch, P., Berde, B., Labrador, I., Ramos, A., and Tavernier, W. (2018, January 9\u201311). A Vision for the Next Generation Platform-as-a-Service. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE 5G World Forum (5GWF), Silicon Valley, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/5GWF.2018.8516972"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mimidis Kentis, A., Ollora Zaballa, E., Soler, J., Bessem, S., Roullet, L., Van Rossem, S., Pinneterre, S., Paolino, M., Raho, D., and Du, X. (2018, January 26\u201328). The Next Generation Platform as a Service Cloudifying Service Deployments in Telco-Operators Infrastructure. Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT 2018), Saint Malo, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICT.2018.8464838"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Salsano, S., Lombardo, F., Pisa, C., Greto, P., and Blefari-Melazzi, N. (2017, January 6\u20138). RDCL 3D, a model agnostic web framework for the design and composition of NFV services. Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), Berlin, Germany.","DOI":"10.1109\/NFV-SDN.2017.8169882"},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"Peterson, L. (2019, May 19). \u201cCORD: Central Office Re-Architected as a Datacenter,\u201d Open Networking Lab White Paper. Available online: http:\/\/opencord.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/CORD-Whitepaper.pdf."},{"key":"ref_7","unstructured":"Quittek, J. (2019, May 19). \u201cNetwork Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Management and Orchestration\u201d Gs Nfv-Man 001 V1.1.1. Available online: https:\/\/www.etsi.org\/deliver\/etsi_gs\/NFV-MAN\/001_099\/001\/01.01.01_60\/gs_nfv-man001v010101p.pdf."},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). Open Source MANO. Available online: https:\/\/osm.etsi.org\/."},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). 5G Tango. Available online: https:\/\/www.5gtango.eu\/."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"20","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2018.1800084","article-title":"Design and Deployment of an Open Management and Orchestration Platform for Multi-Site NFV Experimentation","volume":"57","author":"Nogales","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"Yilma, G.M., Yousaf, F.Z., Sciancalepore, V., and Costa-Perez, X. (2019, May 19). On the Challenges and KPIs for Benchmarking Open-Source NFV MANO Systems: OSM vs. ONAP. Available online: https:\/\/arxiv.org\/ftp\/arxiv\/papers\/1904\/1904.10697.pdf."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Alvarez, F., Breitgand, D., Griffin, D., Andriani, P., Rizou, S., Zioulis, N., Moscatelli, F., Serrano, J., Keltsch, M., and Trakadas, P. (2019). An Edge-to-Cloud Virtualized Multimedia Service Platform for 5G Networks. IEEE Trans. Broadcast., 1\u201312.","DOI":"10.1109\/TBC.2019.2901400"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kachris, C., Falsafi, B., and Soudris, D. (2019). Building the Infrastructure for Deploying FPGAs in the Cloud. Hardware Accelerators in Data Centers, Springer International Publishing.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-92792-3"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chiotakis, S., Pinneterre, S., and Paolino, M. (2019, January 18\u201321). vFPGAmanager: A Hardware-Software Framework for Optimal FPGA Resources Exploitation in Network Function Virtualization. Proceedings of the 2019 European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC), Valencia, Spain. Available online: http:\/\/www.virtualopensystems.com\/en\/research\/scientific-contributions\/vfpgamanager-eucnc2019\/.","DOI":"10.1109\/EuCNC.2019.8802043"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Li, X., Wang, X., Liu, F., and Xu, H. (2018, January 2\u20136). DHL: Enabling Flexible Software Network Functions with FPGA Acceleration. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE 38th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Vienna, Austria.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICDCS.2018.00011"},{"key":"ref_16","unstructured":"Zhang, Q., Liu, F., and Zeng, C. (2019, May 19). Adaptive Interference-Aware VNF Placement for Service-Customized 5G Network Slices. Available online: https:\/\/pdfs.semanticscholar.org\/5aea\/e87f05bb4a5f08b9fae9a135863c4eaeea59.pdf?_ga=2.233200922.503865865.1558267333-871421267.1558267333."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fei, X., Liu, F., Xu, H., and Jin, H. (2018, January 15\u201319). Adaptive VNF Scaling and Flow Routing with Proactive Demand Prediction. Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM 2018\u2014IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, Honolulu, HI, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/INFOCOM.2018.8486320"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"613","DOI":"10.1109\/JSAC.2019.2894304","article-title":"Stochastic Performance Analysis of Network Function Virtualization in Future Internet","volume":"37","author":"Miao","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wang, T., Xu, H., and Liu, F. (2017, January 5\u20138). Multi-Resource Load Balancing for Virtual Network Functions. Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE 37th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Atlanta, GA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICDCS.2017.233"},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"Fei, X., Liu, F., Xu, H., and Jin, H. (2017, January 14\u201316). Towards Load-Balanced VNF Assignment in Geo-Distributed NFV Infrastructure. Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE\/ACM 25th International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), Vilanova i la Geltr\u00fa, Spain."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mfula, H., and Nurminen, J.K. (2018, January 16\u201320). Self-Healing Cloud Services in Private Multi-Clouds. Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on High Performance Computing & Simulation (HPCS), Orleans, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/HPCS.2018.00041"},{"key":"ref_22","unstructured":"Zhijing, L., Zhao, B., Zheng, H., Ge, Z., Mahimkar, A., Wang, J., Emmons, J., and Ogden, L. (November, January 31). Predictive Analysis in Network Function Virtualization. Proceedings of the Acm Sigcomm Internet Measurement Conference, Imc. Association for Computing Machinery, Boston, MA, USA."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Acker, A., Schmidt, F., Gulenko, A., and Kao, O. (2018, January 10\u201313). Online Density Grid Pattern Analysis to Classify Anomalies in Cloud and NFV Systems. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom), Nicosia, Cyprus.","DOI":"10.1109\/CloudCom2018.2018.00063"},{"key":"ref_24","unstructured":"R\u00f6ck, C., and Kolb, S. (2016). Nucleus\u2014Unified Deployment and Management for Platform as a Service, University of Bamberg. Tech. Rep., 49, Available online: https:\/\/www.uni-bamberg.de\/pi\/forschung\/publikationen\/16-04-nucleus-unified-deployment-and-management-for-platform-as-a-service\/."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"184","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2018.1600104","article-title":"Introducing Development Features for Virtualized Network Services","volume":"56","author":"Tavernier","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Veitch, P., Broadbent, A., Rossem, S.V., Sayadi, B., Natarianni, L., Al Jammal, B., Roullet, L., Mimidis, A., Ollora, E., and Soler, J. (2018, January 9\u201311). Re-Factored Operational Support Systems for the Next Generation Platform-as-a-Service (NGPaaS). Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE 5G World Forum (5GWF), Silicon Valley, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/5GWF.2018.8516995"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Berde, B., Van Rossem, S., Ramos, A., Orru, M., and Shatnawi, A. (2018, January 18\u201321). Dev-for-Operations and Multi-Sided Platform for Next Generation Platform as a Service. Proceedings of the European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC), Ljubljana, Slovenia.","DOI":"10.1109\/EuCNC.2018.8443272"},{"key":"ref_28","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). ETSI NFV ISG, Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Network Service Templates Specification. Available online: https:\/\/www.etsi.org\/deliver\/etsi_gs\/NFV-IFA\/001_099\/014\/02.01.01_60\/gs_NFV-IFA014v020101p.pdf."},{"key":"ref_29","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). Red Hat Ansible. Available online: https:\/\/www.ansible.com."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1178","DOI":"10.1002\/ett.3082","article-title":"Superfluidity: A Flexible Functional Architecture for 5G Networks: G. Bianchi et al","volume":"27","author":"Bianchi","year":"2016","journal-title":"Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech."},{"key":"ref_31","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). Cisco Cloud Service Router 100V Series. Available online: https:\/\/www.cisco.com\/c\/en\/us\/products\/routers\/cloud-services-router-1000v-series\/index.html."},{"key":"ref_32","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). Fortinet- FortiGate Virtual Appliance. Available online: https:\/\/www.fortinet.com\/content\/dam\/fortinet\/assets\/data-sheets\/FortiGate_VM.pdf."},{"key":"ref_33","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). Elastic Stack. Available online: https:\/\/www.elastic.co\/."},{"key":"ref_34","unstructured":"Ferran, C., Mimidis-Kentis, A., Bonourn, N., and Soler, J. (2019, January 24\u201328). Policy Framework Prototype for ONOS. Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), Paris, France. Available online: http:\/\/orbit.dtu.dk\/files\/170742254\/PID5809349.pdf."},{"key":"ref_35","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). Kubernetes. Available online: https:\/\/kubernetes.io\/."},{"key":"ref_36","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). The Helm Package Manager for Kubernetes. Available online: https:\/\/helm.sh\/."},{"key":"ref_37","unstructured":"(2019, May 19). NGPaaS Deliverable 5.6: Final platform prototype for 5G PaaS. Available online: http:\/\/ngpaas.eu\/projectoutcomes\/#ngpaasdeliverables."}],"container-title":["Future Internet"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-5903\/11\/5\/119\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T12:53:54Z","timestamp":1760187234000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-5903\/11\/5\/119"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,21]]},"references-count":37,"journal-issue":{"issue":"5","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,5]]}},"alternative-id":["fi11050119"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/fi11050119","relation":{},"ISSN":["1999-5903"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1999-5903","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,21]]}}}