The growth of data traffic related to datacenter (DC) interconnection and the expected explosion of services requiring intensive use of telecom networks, such as video and mobile services, are contributing to the increment of the traffic that transport networks need to support. In fact, Cisco has recently forecast that in the next few years IP traffic related to video services will correspond up to the 80% of the total IP traffic and that mobile data traffic will reach about 367 EB per month by 2020. Aiming at reducing Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operational Expenditure (OPEX) required to satisfy demand growth, service providers are exploring new approaches in contrast to traditional ones. From the transport network perspective, aiming at supporting such traffic growth, telecom network operators need to satisfy services requirements without incurring in network performance degradation and in a cost-effective manner. Therefore, cloud-ready transport networks are on the scope of different network providers, including intelligent control architectures and elastic data planes; i.e. based on novel optical technologies. Considering the telecom cloud, where telecom network resources can be offered as a service, in this paper we present three use cases related to DC interconnection, video distribution and 5G networks, and identify their basic connectivity needs from the transport networks according to realistic scenarios. © 2016 IEEE.

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