A method and system for scaling, telecommunications network and computer program product

A method, in a virtualised system portion of a telecommunications network, for scaling one or more network functions forming at least one network service in response to a predicted variation in network traffic, the or each network function comprising multiple network elements executable in respective virtual machine (VM) instances of the virtualised system portion, the method comprising monitoring network resources and traffic to determine the actual load of the or each network function, generating data representing one or more traffic patterns for the or each network function, and scaling the or each network service by deploying, in parallel, one or more virtual machines instantiated over physical hardware of the network for respective ones of selected network elements of the multiple network elements.