4.4 Relation between rule, policy and intent

28.3123GPPIntent driven management services for mobile networksManagement and orchestrationRelease 17TS

An intent specifies the expectations including requirements, goals, and constraints for a specific service or network management workflow, while a policy specifies the action(s) to be taken when given condition occurs and rules specifies the explicit or formula logics to be executed. For certain scenarios, policies can be used in conjunction with intents to achieve the autonomous purposes. Figure 4.4-1 describes the relation between rule, policy and intent in the "what-how" view. As it now stands, the telecom systems are mainly focused on "how" and "less what". The current 5G networks brings more operational complexities, and the telecom system need to be able to adapt their operation to the business objectives of the operator as well as expectations of customer, which is driving customer to shift the focus from "how" to "what". The first step towards that shift, has been shift from "Rule based management" to "Policy driven management", with more focus on "how" and less on "what" covering domain specific issues/aspects (an example for policy is when the average throughput is lower than certain threshold, take specified actions). As technologies are evolving and the level of complexity exceeds, the need for an abstraction level description (i.e. Intent) becomes more apparent (an example for intent is the target average throughput for certain area should be assured). An intent driven system will be able to learn the behaviour of networks and services and allows a customer to provide the desired state, without detailed knowledge of how to get to the desired state.

Figure 4.4-1: Relation between rule, policy and intent