Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) promises a paradigm shift in enabling efficient Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) services by providing storage and processing capacity within the access range of the mobile devices. In MEC, Mobile Edge (ME) servers are placed at the edge of the mobile networks eliminating the need to offload compute-/storage-intensive tasks of the mobile devices to the core of the network (the centralized cloud data center). This reduces the network latency and enhances the quality of service provided for the mobile end users. Different applications can benefit from the large scale deployments of ME servers such as smart grid applications, content delivery networks, content sharing, traffic management, and E-health applications. This promising paradigm comes with its own downside related to the management complexity of large scale deployments that offers hundreds of applications to millions of users. In this paper, we introduce a software defined based framework to enable efficient MCC services through the integration of different software defined system components with the MEC system.

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) enables ubiquitous and efficient cloud services to mobile users which facilitates mobile cloud computing (MCC) more easily by providing storage and processing capacity within the access range of the mobile devices. To achieve the goals of MEC, Mobile Edge (ME) servers are co-placed with the mobile network base station (at the edge of the mobile network). This eliminates the need to move computation and storage intensive tasks from a mobile device to a centralized cloud server. This in turn reduces the network communication load and delay and it also enhances the quality of service provided for the mobile end users. Applications, such as smart grid applications, content delivery networks, crowed sourcing, traffic management and E-health, will greatly benefit from such deployment. Unfortunately, a large-scale deployment of ME servers that is needed to make hundreds of applications available to millions of users, comes with great management complexity. The emerging technique of Software-Defined Systems (SDSys) abstracts the management complexities of many systems at different layers by utilizing software components. In this paper, we build a software-defined based framework that enable efficient and ubiquitous MCC services by integrating different SDSys components with the MEC system. The integrated framework is implemented and it is evaluated for its feasibility, flexibility and potential superiority.