Cloudifying the 3GPP IP Multimedia Subsystem for 4G and Beyond: A Survey

4G systems have been continuously evolving to cope with the emerging challenges of human-centric and machine-to- machine (M2M) applications. Research has also now started on 5G systems. Scenarios have been proposed and initial requirements derived. 4G and beyond systems are expected to easily deliver a wide range of human-centric and M2M applications and services in a scalable, elastic, and cost efficient manner. The 3GPP IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) was standardized as the service delivery platform for 3G networks. Unfortunately, it does not meet several requirements for provisioning applications and services in 4G and beyond systems. However, cloudifying it will certainly pave the way for its use as a service delivery platform for 4G and beyond. This article presents a critical overview of the architectures proposed so far for cloudifying the IMS. There are two classes of approaches; the first focuses on the whole IMS system, and the second deals with specific IMS entities. Research directions are also discussed. IMS granularity and a PaaS for the development and management of IMS functional entities are the two key directions we currently foresee.