Project ODEON

Abstract

ODEON exploits recent advances in Networked Media and Cloud Computing technologies and progresses beyond the state-of-the-art by elaborating, on their convergence, into an Ad-Hoc Media Delivery Cloud (AMDC), where users exchange Media Events, exploiting servers’ infrastructures available in Conventional Clouds (public or private infrastructure configurations, usually offered by Over-the-Top providers), Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and Media Distribution Community Clouds (Home Gateways/Community Gateways configurations, exploited in Peer-to-Peer mode).

Concretely, in the envisaged solution, the novel ODEON Media Distribution Middleware (MDM) will dynamically create AMDCs based on new ODEON nodes installed in current infrastructure of servers (belonging to one or more owners), answering to users ad-hoc requests.  The AMDC is proposing customized uni/multi-path configuration for QoE-based Media Delivery, thanks to the predictive model exploited by the MDM for resources allocation.

ODEON introduces a novel business actor, the Media Cloud Provider (MCP), which creates, on demand, the AMDC and offers it to other entities. The MCP owns an infrastructure of servers (e.g., a conventional Cloud Provider could become MCP) or has concluded Service Level Agreements (SLA) with different servers ‘owners (e.g., other Cloud/CDN Providers) to use their servers for AMDC purposes.

The client of AMDC could be a Media Service Provider or/and Content Provider that wants to serve an event (live or not) to a casual or stable community. However, ODEON architecture does not exclude a business model where a Service Provider also has the role of MCP.

The immediate beneficiaries of ODEONresults will be the owners of the servers’ infrastructures (e.g., Conventional Cloud Provider, CDN Provider), which, becoming MCP, or cooperating with an MCP, will extend their Media Delivery business with initial low capital and operational expenditures (CAPEX, OPEX). ODEON has its origin in the interest of two large cloud operators: Orange Poland and Seidor, in using the infrastructure for multimedia transmission through the Internet.