The NFV/SDN paradigms promote the deployment of Network Functions (NF) as software components into cloud infrastructures, and the identification of relevant abstractions for their configuration, control and management. Such NFs can comprise processing elements in the data plane (e.g., packet inspection, filtering, flow-level monitoring, or access control) as well as control-plane components (e.g., signaling, routing, dynamic load balancing). This paradigm shift essentially enables new cloud service models, i.e., NF-as-a-service (NFaaS), which can lead to significant operational and technology investment cost savings for service providers. Beyond that, telecom operators can greatly benefit from NFV/SDN, considering the increasing trend to implement mobile communication network functions in software.

NFV/SDN orchestration can satisfy the evolving requirements of service and infrastructure providers with respect to the resource constraints, dynamic network conditions and service environments. Virtualized NFs should be deployed, located, scaled, and orchestrated in a holistic manner to realize novel services, through exposing their configurations using standardized interfaces, whereas SDN can provide a flexible network plane along these lines. Furthermore, the integration of protocol and application/service processing creates opportunities for enhancing the performance of cloud applications and services when accessed by mobile users.

In this respect, SWFAN aims at bringing together researchers, engineers, and practitioners to discuss challenging aspects of NFV/SDN orchestration, such as the elastic provisioning of computing, storage, and network resources for NF deployment and scaling in the cloud, the development of new models, protocols, algorithms, and abstractions for more flexible and agile network control, management and operation, as well as NFaaS negotiation, contracting, billing, and SLA management.