This year’s theme of IM 2015 is "Integrated Management in the Age of Big Data”. As such, the potential of Big Data to improve the quality of management in a number of areas was emphasized. Besides the typical Network Management, Service Management, and Business Management areas, the different workshops, mini conferences, and technical sessions addressed management approaches and methodologies. Especially, the emergence of network virtualized functions and video streaming on the application side tend to determine a new set of emerging challenges. 

The main lessons learned in the context of IM 2015 include (a) Big Data is affecting network traffic similar to OLN traffic and, therefore, (b) OLN traffic management for transferring and streaming data (video) is highly relevant. (c) Big Data is growing with the integration of the IoT (devices, networks, sensors …), which creates new management challenges. (d) Self-Management is becoming more relevant especially in modern mobile networks, e.g., 5G network devices, antennas, base stations, and middle boxes. (e) SDN is emerging and will facilitate network management in the future, until legacy devices are replaced, hybrid management modes are required. (f) SDN can be used to enable more energy efficient networks similar to SmartenIT’s approaches. (e) Community networks are growing and extending their functionality to offer cloud service on fault tolerant infrastructure.

In summary, the general challenge of growing traffic remains and is mainly driven by todays Big Data applications. However, new tools and approaches to tackle this challenge are constantly emerging, e.g., SDN, Self-Management and will therefore transform the ways networks and related businesses are managed. Furthermore, models in which users are managers and owners of networks simultaneously become increasingly popular and will eventually become a challenge to traditional ISP business models.