Patrick Kelly, Appledore Research Group Virtualization of the network brings with it monumental challenges necessary to manage cloud services. This challenge is embodied in the on-demand characteristics of cloud services and the properties of scaling, healing, and optimization of the underlying infrastructure. One of the areas moving to the forefront to help human operators manage this complex task is machine learning. Machine learning or artificial intelligence itself is not new. IBM Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997. More recently in 2016, AlphaGo a program designed by Google DeepMind defeated Lee Sedol a world champion at the Chinese game of Go which has as many possible moves as atoms in the universe! Machine learning algorithms use computational methods to “learn” information directly from data without relying on a predetermined equation as a model. The algorithms adaptively improve their performance as the number of samples available for learning increases. In assuring services in the telecommunication network early techniques were derived to write rules or develop signature patterns to determine the root cause of a problem. Virtualization makes the old root cause technology obsolete because resources and workloads move around dynamically – we no longer have fixed network and […]