Nowadays, digital technologies and the internet are transforming entire business sectors, with major impacts on labour markets and society at large.
We are living in exciting times of unprecedented digital transformation, if not a revolution. In Europe, we have a number of achievements to celebrate - we are at the cutting edge as far as network technologies are concerned, we have a sound European cloud computing strategy and we now have the ambitious goal of making the digital single market a reality. The net futures 2015 conference will look at and debate these perspectives.
We have recently put forward the EU 5G vision, feeding into a global debate aiming to agree on the scope of 5G, but also on its main technological constituents, and the timetable for putting it in place. It was the result of an 18 month-long work within the 5G public-private partnership, an initiative bringing together the European commission and industry.
"We are at the cutting edge as far as network technologies are concerned, we have a sound European cloud computing strategy and we now have the ambitious goal of making the digital single market a reality"
5G networks will encompass optical, cellular and satellite solutions and rely heavily on emerging technologies, such as software defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualisation, mobile edge computing and fog computing (FC). We look forward to debating these issues during the net futures conference sessions.
New network infrastructure will bring about the capacities needed for the dramatic growth we are expecting in the use of communication - especially wireless - technologies by both people and machines. It will therefore support changes and improvements touching upon many sectors and many aspects of our lives, delivering a truly connected society.
These technologies will help remove the current main obstacles to innovation within networks, and allow for faster deployment of new network technologies and applications on top of the network. There is also significant potential for such technologies to enable new small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the networking sector, focused on developing applications and products on top of the network.
With regards to the internet of things (IoT), the industry is in the process of creating an alliance for internet of things innovation (AIOTI) that will overcome traditional silos and national borders to unite Europe's forces towards a successful implementation of the IoT. This will enable business to become fully digital and allow sectors such as healthcare, financial utilities, transport, energy and many more to benefit from radical transformations and improvements.
We also believe that IoT will be pivotal in enabling the digital single market, through new products and services. The IoT, big data, cloud computing and their related business models will be the three most important drivers of our digital economy, and in this context it is fundamental for a fully functional single market in Europe to address aspects of ownership, access, privacy and data flow - the new production factor.
New generations of networks, IoT and cloud computing are also vectors of industrial strategy. We are creating a new ecosystem that cuts across vertical areas, in convergence between the physical and digital words. It combines connectivity, data generation, processing and analytics, with actuation and new interfaces, resulting in new products and services based on platforms and software and apps. At the commission, we believe that the creation of a thriving IoT and cloud ecosystems is a prerequisite for EU innovation, resulting in new business models that benefit a large set of stakeholders, from the telecoms sector to the industrial and service sectors, utilities and SMEs.
I am also proud to share that net futures 2015 also has a very strong entrepreneurial component, with sessions on Startup Europe, FIWARE and business acceleration. FIWARE is an open innovation platform that is becoming a common standard for smart cities.
Currently, around 30 municipalities from Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Brazil are part of the 'open and agile smart cities' initiative, which aims to accelerate the adoption of common standards and principles. This is an ambitious goal, given that the FIWARE open source community is fostering and supporting the evolution of standards for smart cities worldwide.
"The creation of a thriving IoT and cloud ecosystems is a prerequisite for EU innovation, resulting in new business models that benefit a large set of stakeholders, from the telecoms sector to the industrial and service sectors, utilities and SMEs"
In the net futures department, which I lead, we are fortunate enough to have understood early on that a 'one dimension, one sector' approach would not provide future-proof solutions.
Therefore, we have taken an all-encompassing approach to this varied future internet portfolio. By involving so many stakeholders from the research and innovation, entrepreneurship, business development and policymaking domains, we want to bridge the gaps between these communities. This makes it easier for innovations to enter the market.
The net futures 2015 conference is the result of 11 successful future internet assemblies, and this year more than ever we would like it to be an open multi-stakeholder forum for important discussions, exchanges and decision making on the future of the internet and digitalisation.
We want this conference to be a celebration of high potential themes we champion in net futures - the start-ups ecosystems, the underlying future networks and the breakthrough new technologies that will shape the lives of future generations. We will look at innovation ecosystems, how to strengthen digital innovation and research objectives for the digital single market.
The debate will take place between 25-26 March, and an overview of discussions will be featured in a special issue of the net futures newsletter. Interested parties will also be able to consult key messages through #netfutures15, and we invite you to join the conversation.