Leading European communications companies and research organizations join forces to launch the UniverSelf project

A group of 17 leading European telecommunications service providers, IT corporations, infrastructure vendors and academic institutions have launched “UniverSelf” a research initiative whose goal is to overcome the increasing complexity of managing communication networks and enable their future growth by generating innovations in autonomic networking – technologies that enable networks to manage themselves.

The solutions “UniverSelf” creates will benefit the European ICT industry by creating new business opportunities and standards, benefit EU citizens by improving Quality of Service and improving performance, and benefit telecommunications service providers and network operators by reducing time-to-market and increasing savings in operational expenditure through the optimization of human resources and a reduction in manual errors.

“UniverSelf” is supported within the scope of the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) from which it has received 10M€ funding. UniverSelf will last 36 months (2010-2013) and take advantage of the diverse expertise and complementary skills of its members who represent the following corporations and research institutions from across the ICT industry:

Alcatel-Lucent (Project Coordinator), France Telecom (Technical Manager), Telecom Italia (IT), Telefonica I+D (ES), NEC Europe (DE), Thales Communications (FR), Fraunhofer FOKUS (DE), IBBT Interdisciplinary Institute For Broadband Technology (BE), INRIA Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (FR), VTT Valtion Teknillinen Tutkimuskeskus (FI), UCL University College London (UK), UNIS University of Surrey (UK), NKUA National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR), UPRC University of Piraeus Research Center (GR), UT Universiteit Twente (NL)

The research program has four objectives:

1. Design a Unified Management Framework for the different existing and emerging architectures, that is cross-technology (i.e. wireless and wireline) and will serve as a  common platform for both systems and services.
2. Design the functions that will enable self-managing networks and embed these functions directly within the systems and elements that comprise the network infrastructure and support service delivery.
3. Demonstrating the potential for deployment of autonomic solutions in carrier grade networks with an eye towards stimulating further research in Europe towards application and commercialization.
4. Generate confidence in the viability and use of autonomic technologies in   telecommunication networks by defining “certification” parameters for autonomic networking products.

Martin Vigoureux, Research Director at Bell Labs and Project Coordinator, says: “It is time to take self-management to the next level. UniverSelf, driven by customer needs and focused on the industrial impact of research, is an ideal instrument to start engineering autonomics and make them a reality in operational networks. Numerous challenges lie ahead but delivering efficient, converged and trustworthy solutions, together with the appropriate standards, is essential to reach true operational benefits and wide deployments.”

Christian Destré, Project Leader at France Telecom-Orange Labs and Project Technical Manager, says: “From the operator viewpoint, Self-management technologies act as enablers to face the increasing operational management complexity due to networks convergence, usage revolution with the exploding number of IP-based devices and services, and network and service role evolutions related to the Future Internet. Confident unification and standardization are required for a broad adoption and deployment in operational environments.”

Antonio Manzalini, Project Manager at Telecom Italia says: “Future networks are likely to evolve towards pervasive environments of link, processing and storage resources and services; virtualization, enabling multiple logical networks to co-exist on top of a same physical infrastructure, will offer new business opportunities but it will increase management complexity even more. Autonomic self-management might be essential part of this vision, considering also that these future networks have to be managed in highly dynamic and unpredictable contexts. At the end of the day, reducing OPEX and enabling new sources of revenues (also with new business models) will decrease the investment risks for Operators.”

Jose Antonio Lozano-Lopez, Autonomic Communications Division Manager at Telefonica, says: “Autonomic infrastructure is going to change some of the well established current networking and management paradigms. After some years of successful research, it is the moment to boost autonomics into real operational environments. UniverSelf pragmatic approach to autonomic will provide not only the networking procedures, but also the governance methods and tools to dramatically decrease OPEX on Operators’ operational processes.”

UniverSelf was launched in Villarceaux, France in the premises of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs.

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare, transportation, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP and optics technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow us on Twitter: external linkhttp://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.