Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/10603-univerself-initiative-to-tackle-complexity-of-communication-networks

UniverSelf Initiative to Tackle Complexity of Communication Networks

February 2, 2011

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 and benefit EU citizens by improving Quality of Service and performance. It will also 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 (FP7) for Research and Technological Development from which it has received € 10 M funding. The research initiative will last 36 months, until 2013.

Martin Vigoureux, Research Director at Bell Labs and Project Coordinator, said, "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."