3rd IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (IEEE NetSoft 2017)

“Softwarization Sustaining a Hyper-connected World: en route to 5G”

 

Date: 3-7 July, 2017
Venue: Bologna, Italy

 

Software-Defined Networks (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Cloud-Edge-Fog Computing are key ingredients of an overall techno-economic transformation trend, which is impacting deeply Telecom and ICT industries. This trend, often called “Softwarization”, will bring costs optimizations and new service paradigms. In particular, SDN, NFV and network programmability are going to become the main enablers of the 5th Generation (5G) of infrastructures, which will span from high data rate fixed-mobile services to the Internet of Things.

This timely flagship conference of IEEE SDN will shed light on the fundamental technology components and systems for SDN-NFV infrastructures, clouds-edges and any sort of network services in order to fully exploit its potential for the efficiently handling of heterogeneous resources across wire and wireless networks and datacenter domains and for easy and fast deployment of new ICT services. The IEEE NetSoft will bring together academia and industry to jointly review and ponder maturing developments related to all aspects of Softwarization, and its first exploitation with the 5G.

 

Welcome from Antonio Manzalini, General Co-Chair

Manzalini

After London and Seoul, in 2017, Bologna is hosting the third edition of the flagship conference of the IEEE SDN initiative. IEEE NetSoft 2017 Conference will address the theme “Softwarization Sustaining a Hyper-connected World: en route to 5G”. 5G, in fact, will be much more than the next generation of mobile infrastructures after 4G: it will be a first expression of a larger trend, known as the Softwarization of Telecommunications, where SDN, NFV but also Cloud Computing, and its evolution towards Edge and Fog Computing, and even Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) are converging together.

This convergence will bring a complex socio-economic transformation which can be summarized into three major dimensions:

  1. “Softwarization” is lowering the “threshold” for new, even small, Infrastructure Providers to enter the market. Standard hardware solutions will offer the possibility to deploy very low costs infrastructures, as a commodity. It is likely that regional/local edge Infrastructure Providers (not only Telcos, but also Municipalities, Communities, contiguous markets Service Providers) will proliferate in the future;
  2. there will be a “boom” of applications and (network) services (in fact, both network-cloud services and Users’ applications will share the same paradigm X-as-a-Service) to be run on commoditized Infrastructures. Infrastructures will assume the form of extended and distributed “execution” environments: from the Fog Computing resources (up to the terminals) to the Edge-Cloud Computing (Network PoPs, small and medium Data Centers) across converged fixed-radio connectivity;
  3. the (today) missing (and most strategic) piece will be the “Operating Platforms” allowing the applications and (network) services to be run on the Infrastructures, metaphorically just like an Operating System is allowing apps to be run on a PC. These “Operating Platforms” will ensure the automation of the Infrastructures’ operations processes and the service provisioning in such dynamic and complex future scenarios (here it comes the A.I.). It will be at this level where the game local-vs-global will be played.

 

This, and much more, will be presented and discussed at the IEEE NetSoft 2017 Conference.

A warm welcome!

 

Welcome from Roberto Verdone, General Co-Chair

Verdone

I am very happy to host NetSoft 2017 at the University of Bologna, in Italy. In the past years the industry and research trends in the field of radio networks, have brought to a deep convergence with wired networks, made possible through the concept of Network Softwarisation. As a consequence, research groups traditionally working separately in the radio or the wired domains, have found a fertile ground for collaboration, using SDN and NFV as main toolkits. Architectures like the Internet of Things are currently being deeply revolutionized by the concept of Network Softwarisation. The scope of NetSoft 2017 is to bring together researchers from academia and industry, in a lively contest, to pave the way towards future softwarised networks. What environment would be better than one of the most prestigious Universities in the world, in a city that was home to the inventor of modern telecommunications, Guglielmo Marconi?

 

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