Towards an Integrated Resource Management Framework: A Challenge for the Future Multimedia Services

Being able to manage the entire chain of resources involved in a communication session is a need for the purposes of future multimedia services, because many of the bottlenecks in communications will move from the network side to the end-systems or third-party equipments. Indeed the quality delivered by multimedia applications depends highly upon the capabilities of the end-systems. The advantages of managing all the resources involved in communication sessions are twofold. First, a correct and more precise diagnosis about QoS bottlenecks (resources not fulfilling their part of QoS) is then possible. Second, the way the service stakeholders are granting their commitment can be assessed, since QoS bottlenecks will be more precisely located. This need of managing all the resources within a communication session together with the advantages thereof define the concept of integrated resource management and constitute a key for providing the future services. In this paper, we analyze these services and review outcomes of the different areas that are likely to help bring up those services.