Communication Platform for Tenders of Novels Transport Networks - COMPLETE

Project Information

COMPLETE

Grant agreement ID: 645568

DOI

10.3030/645568

Project closed

EC signature date 8 December 2014

Start date 1 January 2015

End date 31 December 2017

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 718 250,00

EU contribution

€ 718 250,00

Coordinated by

INSTYTUT CHEMII BIOORGANICZNEJ POLSKIEJ AKADEMII NAUK
Poland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COMPLETE (Communication Platform for Tenders of Novels Transport Networks - COMPLETE)

Reporting period: 2016-07-01 to 2017-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Increasing complexity of public procurement procedures enforces the need for creating an EU-wide entity to support public institutions with know-how and clear guidelines on how to efficiently collect and analyse current needs and requirements from end users of public infrastructures, assess available market information and conduct tenders for R&D.
Public sector, in order to efficiently deploy beyond state-of-the-art optical equipment in today's networks, needs to synchronize efforts by building a common procurement roadmap specifying common requirements in the short and mid-to-long term in areas of common interest.
The objective of the COMPLETE project is to optimize spending of public resources when purchasing optical network equipment and the related services. As a key approach towards this goal, the project proposes to create a common information platform for public procurers and support them in the procurement process by providing organizational and technical expertise.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Summary of PPI-related activities
Project partners initiated the dialogue with market vendors (signed NDAs) and received technical information about roadmaps of ADVA, CISCO, CORIANT, ECI Telecom, Lumentum, CzechLight and Huawei. As a direct outcome of this activity, the final version of the database for high-tech R&D roadmap has been prepared, concluded with Deliverable D2.7. Moreover, thanks to active participation to well-known conferences and exhibitions project partners established links with younger companies addressing recently identified gaps in the networking field. An example of such a small company is Talaia working in a field of network security detection and threat mitigation.

Summary of PCP-related activities
Project Partners prepared the framework and procedures for running PCP activities by public network operators. The analysis of alternative types (to the PCP) of procurement procedures have been performed. The partners concentrated on major technical challenges that the European NREN community is facing nowadays, based on feedback from their users and customers. The description of these challenges has been performed in a technology neutral fashion since, up to now, there has been no mature technology that can fully address them. Moreover, Project Partners performed the exercise with the PCP proof-of-concept implementation, following the well-defined PCP procedures described in Deliverable D2.2 as well as guidelines received from the independent PCP expert hired in the project. The work done has been reported in Deliverable D2.3 and provides an explanation of procedures developed in COMPLETE to formulate a PCP project and, in particular, an instantiation of a new PCP project within the NREN community.

Project exploitation strategy
The project's exploitation strategy will be based on practical implementation of the COMPLETE Framework after the project end. Partners of the consortium claim they would like to further explore opportunities for public institutions arising from the EC calls for PCP / PPI projects. The COMPLETE Framework and PCP procedures are specifically designed for the public operators' community, therefore the project partners believe the adoption of procedures in potential follow-ups of the project will be a natural way to exploit the project results. On the one hand, the COMPLETE project created an opportunity for the consortium partners to strengthen the cooperation and collaboration, which may result in a future PCP/PPI project. On the other hand, the COMPLETE project opened the floor for discussion with other public network operators, NRENs among the others, but also regional public network providers.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

"The project directly helps public procurers to improve the quality of their procurement outcomes and also enables entities that were previously unable to undertake decisions to take part in public procurements. Specific opportunities to address concrete public sector challenges and needs have been given to vendors and industry. Thanks to project activities, it should be possible to reduce public sector demand fragmentation through definition of common specifications and preparation of joint procurement procedures. The communication platform for public procurers, industry and third parties, created under the COMPLETE project becomes operational, supported and promoted by the consortium partners (also available after the expected end of the project).

""Vendors will be given more opportunities to address concrete public sector challenges. At the same time it should be possible to reduce public sector demand fragmentation through definition of common specifications and preparation of cross-border procurements.""
The success of the proposed project granted the participating members easier access to the next generation optical equipment at the pre-production stage. This includes a streamlined process for procuring experimental hardware which might only be sold by a single vendor due to its inherent nature, as well as having an opportunity to talk to the hardware vendors as a partner of a more important size, to offer suggestions for future products, and provide first-class hands-on expertise and consulting on what features the NREN community might find useful. We expect these changes to directly foster innovation and assist in bootstrapping of advanced applications of the optical networking, such as remote sensing or remote control. As an indirect result, the mere availability of preproduction hardware will deepen the engagement of the universities and research organizations in the upcoming drafting of the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and its application to the optical/photonic layer.

""The project will directly help public procurers to improve the quality of their procurement outcomes and will also enable entities that were previously unable to undertake decisions to take ones and open in such a way new opportunities for these public entities.""
The project dealt with challenging tasks that public entities in Europe are facing. Most of the public entities are not able to gather all information as it requires building time consuming relationships with vendors. The platform built in the project presents accurate and most up to date information together with vendor roadmaps. Such approach guarantees an access to the most advanced and innovative solutions. The platform together with established cooperation contributes to the reduction of fragmentation between public procurers. It helps to define the common information and specification with regards to innovative solutions.

""The created platform under the COMPLETE project will be operational, supported and promoted by the consortium partners also after the expected end of the project. It will allow establishing the long term process for efficient public procurement procedures with respect to public bodies.""
The COMPLETE project platform is designated for all interested public bodies. In particular, it is expected to be most convenient for NRENs as these are at the front of ICT innovation and are interested in frequent and efficient upgrades of their existing infrastructure. Collaboration under the platform helps to further improve these processes both in financial and organizational aspects.
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