Enabling Multi-Provider Cloud Network Service Bundling

Network as a Service (NaaS) enables tenants and cloud users to connect their distributed services across multiple clouds without relying on their own networking services and resources. Cloud service providers (CSPs) offer networking services as bundles delivered on a pay-per-use basis. Although service bundling is a common practice in the cloud providing multiple components as a single service, forcing the packaging of network resources in a pure bundle can severely limit visibility and control over network services. We argue that current descriptions of NaaS services lack transparency making cloud users unable to efficiently discover and consume these services from different providers. To address this issue, we propose to describe network services based on their functionality and according to the OSI model. Our approach explicitly describes bundling between network services that promotes discovery and enables users to create their own network services bundles from different CSPs.