Digital transformation is at the heart of our society. This evolution is made possible by the progressive deployment of a sophisticated digital service infrastructure. The result is a complex system whose availability, reliability, security, and performance challenge its design in order to make it a strong asset of sovereignty, innovation, and industrial competitiveness ideally to serve the well-being of the citizens.
Digital infrastructures are the outcome of several decades of evolution of both the telecommunication and computer software industry. An important transformation is happening, powered by technology and driven by applications, and shows a fantastic disruptive capability. It develops by exploiting the virtualization techniques and software-enabled network functions, providing the ability to program the infrastructure, capturing the “on-demand” user’s need, and therefore allowing more agile resource provisioning.
This trend is going to impact the whole telecommunication and computer-based sector, from design to products and operation. This will strongly impact the multi-year planification approach based on new generations (4G/5G, etc.) and threaten the corresponding industry.
The science of Digital infrastructure raises multiple complex challenges to the research community. Experimentation is becoming an even more important methodology to assess and provide evidence about the diverse design assumptions and choices in realistic conditions. In order to serve these needs, a new generation of test platforms is being deployed, supported by recent international initiatives such as NSF/PAWR, NSF/DARPA Colosseum, and NSF/Fabric in the US, CENI in China, and SLICES ESFRI in Europe.
EMPOWER addresses the international dimension of test platforms, facilitating the dialogue among the main stakeholders, projects, activities, and researchers. Even if matching funding is hard if impossible to achieve, joint activities can be supported, including the alignment of the roadmap and platform components that are pursued on both sides of the Atlantic.
EMPOWER has fully reached its mission to accelerate the joint development between the EU and the US on advanced wireless platforms targeting the new connectivity frontiers beyond 5G. EMPOWER allowed twinning with the best researchers and practitioners involved in EU and US-funded projects, providing a strong trust relationship and willingness to strengthen further the cooperation. And EMPOWER provided recommendations on technologies and experimentation methodologies for future advanced platforms.
Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, the EMPOWER partners re-organized their activities to ensure the impact of the project by finding alternative solutions, such as the very successful activity of TheNetworkingChannel which has been a very effective and innovative platform to connect people and increase the EU-US collaboration.
EMPOWER allowed to strengthen the EU-US collaboration, and it is important for both sides to find ways to continue the collaboration, at a time when the BY5G and 6G topics will become even more strategic. EMPOWER has provided the EC with recommendations about future EU-US cooperation in advanced platforms, including the necessary tight relation with SNS. A very important result is that EMPOWER will be sustained through the SLICES Research Infrastructure (included in the ESFRI Roadmap), as a practical solution until a new appropriate coordination and support action will be launched.
