Toward zero-touch management and orchestration of massive deployment of network slices in 6G

6G systems are expected to serve a massive number of extremely heterogeneous network slices that cross multiple technological domains (i.e., RAN, edge, cloud, and core), posing significant challenges to classical centralized management and orchestration approaches in terms of scalability and sustainability. Within this context, a distributed and intelligent management and orchestration system is mandatory. This article proposes a novel framework featuring a distributed and AI-driven management and orchestration system for massive deployment of network slices in 6G. The proposed framework is compliant with both ETSI standards focusing on autonomous and intelligent network management and orchestration, that is, Zero touch Service Management (ZSM) and Experimental Networked Intelligent (ENI), leveraging their visions to enable autonomous as well as scalable management and orchestration of network slices and their dedicated resources.