Title: Intelligent network service management across the compute continuum

Abstract: As the compute landscape evolves, extending from centralized data centers to the edge of the network and into end-user devices, the complexity of managing network services across this compute continuum keeps increasing.  The convergence of technologies such as Edge Computing, Fog Computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to a highly distributed computing environment where network operations and management face unprecedented challenges. 

In this continuously evolving landscape, the management of network services stretches across the compute continuum, from traditional data centers to the edges of our interconnected world. This continuum is further complicated by the advent of 5G and the emerging 6G technologies, promising unprecedented speeds, lower latency, and the ability to connect a massive number of devices simultaneously. In parallel, open source technologies are playing a key role in shaping the future of network service management, offering a foundation for innovation, collaboration, and standardization across this diverse ecosystem.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) emerge as cornerstone technologies, enabling intelligent network service management across this continuum. They offer the potential to automate complex decision-making processes, optimize network performance in real-time, and predict future network states to preemptively resolve issues. However, integrating AI/ML, open source, and advanced mobile networking technologies into cohesive network service management strategies presents a complex set of challenges and opportunities.

Through this panel discussion, we will uncover the various roles of AI and ML in transforming network service management across the compute continuum. The session aims to foster a special discussion on the capabilities, challenges, and future directions of intelligent network management, providing valuable insights for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike.

Moderator

Bio: Pal Varga is the Head of Department of Telecommunications and Artificial Intelligence at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME). He actively promotes bridging the gap between academia and industry, especially ICT vendors, operators, and service providers together with the stakeholders of vertical industrial use cases such as Industry 4.0, smart cities, and health. His main research interests include communication systems, Cyber-Physical Systems and Industrial Internet of Things, network traffic analysis, end-to-end QoS and SLA issues – for which he is keen to apply hardware acceleration and artificial intelligence, machine learning techniques as well. He advocates for using AI tools and methods in a both creative and responsive manner and provides practice-driven lectures worldwide for the industry. Besides being a member of HTE and Sigma Xi, he is a senior member of IEEE, where he is active both in the IEEE ComSoc (Communication Society) and IEEE IES (Industrial Electronics Society) communities. He is an Editorial Board member in many journals, Associate Editor in IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Infocommunications Journal.

Speakers

Bio: Elias P. Duarte Jr. is a Full Professor at Federal University of Parana, Curitiba, Brazil, where he is the leader of the Computer Networks, Distributed Systems & Security Lab (LaRSiS). He has been twice (2005 and 2009) Visiting Associate Professor at Tohoku University (Japan) and Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Irvine (1997). His research interests include Computer Networks and Distributed Systems, their Dependability, Management, and Algorithms. He has published nearly 300 peer-reviewed papers and has supervised more than 130 students both on the graduate and undergraduate levels.  Prof. Duarte is currently Associate Editor of the Computing (Springer) journal and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, and has served as chair of more than 25 conferences and workshops in his fields of interest, including chairing the TCPs of SRDS’18, ICDCS’21, and GLOBECOM’24. 

He received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, 1997, M.Sc.  degree in Telecommunications from the Polytechnical University of Madrid, Spain, 1991, and both BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science from Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1987 and 1991, respectively. He chaired the Special Interest Group on Fault Tolerant Computing of the Brazilian Computing Society (2005-2007); the Graduate Program in Computer Science of UFPR (2006-2008); and the Brazilian National Laboratory on Computer Networks (2012-2016). He is a member of the Brazilian Computing Society and a Senior Member of the IEEE.

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Bio: Fabrice Guillemin received the graduation degrees from Ecole Polytechnique in 1984 and from Telecom Paris in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Rennes in 1992. He defended his “habilitation” thesis in 1999 with the University Pierre et Marie Curie (LIP6), Paris. Since 1989, he has been with Orange Innovation (formerly, Orange Labs). He is currently leading a research program on end-to-end architectures for virtualized networks. He is a member of the Orange Expert Community on “Networks of Future” and an Orange Senior Expert.

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Bio: Hui Deng has more than 20 years of telecom experience. He was the principal staff of China Mobile for network about 10 years, and served in the board of standard and open source like OPEN-O, OPNFV, and WBA; co-chair of modeling subcommittee of ONAP, IETF MIF working group co-chair et al. Currently as the chief standard delegate, he is covering 5GC/NFV/MEC standardization and open source. He is promoting ETSI NFV standard which will benefit for telecom operators long term strategy during the transformation stage.

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Bio: Sylvaine Kerboeuf is a senior researcher and Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in the “Network Architecture lab” of Bell Labs Core Research, part of Nokia Bell labs. She has researched and applied breakthrough concepts in wireless network architectures, network management and automation, mobile video delivery optimization, and optoelectronics with 25+ years of experience. Since 2015 her research interests include 5G/6G network architectures, dynamic 5G network slicing and cross-slices resource allocation, future network orchestration frameworks, and intent-based network management automation.

She is currently coordinating the Influence project, a French-funded project within the France 2030 framework on intent-driven exposure and automated service fulfillment and assurance. She is also leading the E2E system work package within the Hexa-X-II project, the 6G flagship project under the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) EC funding program. She has authored papers in international conferences and journals and holds several active patents with Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia. Sylvaine holds an M.S. degree in physics and a Ph.D. in solid state physics from Paris Sud University, Orsay France.

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Bio: Mauro Tortonesi is the head of the Big Data and Compute Continuum research laboratory at the University of Ferrara, Italy. He received the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from the University of Ferrara, in 2006. He was a Visiting Scientist with the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC), Pensacola, FL, USA, from 2004 to 2005 and with the United States Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, MD, USA, in 2015. He participates / has participated with several roles in a wide number of research projects in the distributed systems area, with particular reference to Compute Continuum, IoT and Big Data solutions in industrial and military environments. He has co-authored over 100 publications and has 4 international patents.