Managing the Internet as well as its related services and traffic determines the important goal, thus, EMANICS in general and WP8 on Economic Management specifically intends to understand, to determine interrelations, and to simplify such Internet management tasks. This area of concern has been addressed here explicitly under an integrated point of view of multi-domain models, Service Level Management (SLM), and service provisioning. While the provisioning of network services in the Internet requires, besides suitable technology and mechanisms, a well-defined set of economic measures and means in order to be economically viable, its multi-domain aspects of collaborating and competing providers on the transport and services level forms the major challenge of today’s Internet. Thus, to be able to achieve a scalable solution, only an approach addressing technological and economic perspectives of a management framework may succeed in the future. The main reason for this statement originates from the competition of network service providers, third party providers, covering application and content providers, and multiple niche service providers with a large variety of technologies and business models in operation or under preparation. The SLM approach delivers in this context monitoring and reporting tasks, which follow an optimization of economic and technical goals of an entire organization and an improved relationship between providers and customers. To address specify, support,and enable these technical and economic dimensions of Internet management in an integrated manner, the basis is required for providing an appropriate benefit for these providers and such an approach meets the needs of many customers at the same time. The work addresses multi-provider dimensions of network and service management in a structured manner. Based on multi-provider dimensions—covering technical, economic, and operational aspects—external effects of multi-provider scenarios are investigated. This reveals that externalities are of high importance for Internet services, parties involved, and property rights under question. Since the absence of transaction costs in a multi-provider case typically does not hold true, the higher number of providers involved does increase bargaining costs, which in turn leads to a potential externality compensation requirement. Thus, a correct assignment of resource property right decreases.Additionally, the work done here covers SLM investigations in the light of customer-oriented service management and provisioning of high-quality Information Technology (IT) services.

In this context modeling and formalization of Service Level Agreements (SLA) determines the basis for a multi-provider/multi-customer relationship, which addresses negotiations, content, and business alignments. An approach on promise theory applied to SLAmanagement shows a path to address voluntary cooperation under stated assumptions.

Finally, the area of provisioning concepts for Internet services addresses Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning, respective policies, and their application in practice. Useful provisioning patterns have been observed, however, many provider-specific and service-dependent schemes are applied. While overprovisioning still seems to dominate the providerenvironment, the balance between effort and costs starts to be investigated based on IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) guidelines and best practices.Therefore, EMANICS’ deliverable D8.2 outlines in a detailed manner steps and actions undertaken to integrate economic and technical management mechanisms in ahomogeneously interacting approach. Additionally, a set of joint papers attached cover some of those important details of the work sketched in D8.2. Still, future steps are required to complete a fully concise approach. In particular, a critical assessment and evaluation of the identified models, concepts, and mechanisms is foreseen for EMANICS phase two.