The Role of Virtualization in the Small Cell Enabled Mobile Edge Computing Ecosystem Leonardo Goratti 1 , C.E. Costa 1(&) , Jordi Perez-Romero 2 , P.S. Khodashenas 3 , Alan Whitehead 4 , and Ioannis Chochliouros 5 1 CREATE-NET, Via alla Cascata 56/D, Trento, Italy ccosta@fbk.eu 2 Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain 3 i2CAT, Barcelona, Spain 4 IP.Access, Cambourne, UK 5 Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE), Marousi, Greece Abstract. Virtualisation is playing a fundamental role in the evolution of telecommunication services and infrastructures, bringing to rethink some of the traditional design paradigms of the mobile network and enabling those func- tionalities necessary for supporting new complex ecosystems where multiple actors can participate in a dynamic and secure environment. In Small Cell enabled Mobile Edge Computing deployments, the impact of virtualization technologies is significant in two main aspects: the design and deployment of the telecommuni- cation infrastructure, and the delivery of edge services. Besides, the adoption of virtualization technologies has implications also in the implementation of Self Organizing Network (SON) services and in the enforcement of Service Level Agreement (SLA) policies, both critical in the automation of the delivery of multi-tenant oriented services in such complex infrastructure. From the work performed by the H2020 SESAME project, the beneficial use of virtualization techniques emerges in adding network intelligence and services in the network edge. SESAME relays on virtualization for providing Small Cell as a Service (SCaaS) and per operator Edge Computing services, consolidating the emerging multi-tenancy driven design paradigms in communication infrastructures. Keywords: NFV Á Small Cell Á Virtualization Á 5G 1 Introduction Virtualization technologies decouple software from physical infrastructure, and create virtual resources dedicated to distinct services. This approach fosters an ef ficient, flexible and dynamically re-configurable usage of the physical resources, and a rapid and ef ficient service creation process. While virtualization is a fundamental element of Cloud Computing, it is also making its way in the Telecommunication domain. Through virtualization, network elements, functions and components are released from the limitations of dedicated hardware and physical constraints, allowing the dynamic set up and reconfiguration of services and service providers, and the support the functionalities necessary for implementing multi-tenancy and autonomic management. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 G. Boracchi et al. (Eds.): EANN 2017, CCIS 744, pp. 728–733, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-65172-9_61