The world of telecommunications shows clear trends towards increasing dynamicity; new types of networks, new types of applications, and also new types of businesses and business relations. At the same time, and partly due to the increase in dynamicity, operators and service providers, as well as other new type of players such as access aggregators seek to find new innovative architectures, methods and technologies to decrease the cost of operating and managing networks and services. This increase in OPEX is due not only to the increasing dynamicity but also due the ever increasing number of applications. This paper provides background and overview of the underlying issues, which then is used in order to describe concepts and technologies that could play a fundamental role in addressing and resolving those issues, both from recent as well as ongoing research. The paper ends with some conclusions, and with an outlook of issues that needs further studies in upcoming research activities.