The Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (IOWN GF), which seeks to create a smarter, more connected world, completed its first Annual Member Meeting today hosting 392 registered participants from 52 member organizations.
At the Annual Member Meeting, the IOWN GF welcomed two newly elected Directors, Shingo Mizuno of Fujitsu Limited and Gilles Bourdon of ORANGE S.A.
“Fujitsu is working to solve Sustainable Development Goals and we strongly support IOWN Global Forum Vision for 2030. With knowledge gained by leading R&D activities, we will participate in the Forum’s steering committees and working groups around key focus areas including ‘Open All- Photonic Network’, ‘Data-Centric Infrastructure’, and ‘Digital Twin Computing’,” said Shingo Mizuno, Corporate Executive Officer, Vice Head of System Platform Business, Fujitsu Limited. “Additionally, we will contribute to find solutions to several social issues by promoting IOWN concepts and fundamental technologies and practices throughout the world.”
“Orange is happy to join the Board of Directors of the IOWN Global Forum, where we will leverage our R&D expertise and network operator perspective across Europe and Africa to help design sustainable, inclusive and trustworthy future digital technologies bringing value to society,” said Gilles Bourdon, Vice President Wireline Networks & Infrastructure, Orange Labs
A Successful First IOWN GF Annual Member Meeting
At the Annual Member Meeting, all IOWN GF members had the opportunity to join in deep technical discussions of the recently released IOWN GF System and Technology Outlook report, hear presentations from fellow members as well as participate in strategic, technical and use case discussions and Working Group Session.
IOWN GF President and Chairperson, Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, made opening remarks and welcomed two newly elected Directors as well as new members of the forum. Kawazoe is Executive Vice President and Head of Research and Development Planning for NTT Corporation. Gerald Degrace, an IOWN GF Board Member and Head Project Manager for Azure Networking Hardware and Networking OS at Microsoft, followed with a keynote address about speed increases in switching and technical challenges such as its associated power. Also, the recently released report was featured during specific sessions held to review its content. The four-day Annual Member Meeting ended, in great success, with closing comments from Dr. Masayuki Hattori, Secretary of the IOWN GF and Senior Vice President of Sony Group Corporation, expressing his gratitude to all the members for their suggestions and lively discussions, and congratulating the forum on its noteworthy achievements in its first year.
IOWN GF Growth in First Year of Operation
Membership in the forum has risen steadily over the past 12 months to over 50 companies/organizations globally, including academic institutes, focused on the development of next generation networking equipment and devices, device technologies, network enabled services, next generation computing and research in areas such as silicon photonics and distributed computing. New IOWN GF members include:
Sponsor Members: Cisco Systems G.K., Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd., National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Nokia, ORANGE S.A., Wistron Corporation.
General Members: AGC Inc., AJINOMOTO CO., INC., Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited, Fujikura Ltd., HAKUSAN, INC., IP Infusion, JGC Japan Corporation, Juniper Networks K.K., KYOTO SEMICONDUCTOR Co., Ltd., TELEFÓNICA S.A., Toshiba Corporation,
Research and Academic Members: Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni (CNIT), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), National Institute of Informatics.
Details on IOWN GF and membership information can be found at: https://www.iowngf.org.
IOWN GF System and Technology Outlook Report Featured
The newly published report, the IOWN GF System and Technology Outlook, includes an important summary of the technology gaps that exist between two IOWN GF use case requirements — Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and AI-integrated Communication (AIC) — and existing technologies.
CPS are systems that monitor, collect, and analyze data from some aspect of the physical world and generate a response. They include such things as “area management” (smart cities, disaster notification), “mobility management,” and “industry management.”
AIC is a human-centric system design that enables users to interact with other users or systems in remote places and feel as if the interacting entities were together at the same location. Examples include cloud gaming, entertainment, XR navigation, and more.
The paper also offers a high-level discussion of data-centric communication and open, all-photonic networks.
About IOWN GF
IOWN GF’s objective is to accelerate innovation and adoption of a new communication infrastructure to meet our future data and computing requirements through the development of new technologies, frameworks, specifications and reference design in areas such as photonics R&D, distributed connected computing, and use cases and best practices.
Technology, telecommunications, and other industry organizations are invited to join the forum.
To learn more about IOWN GF, download the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum Vision 2030 and Technical Directions White Paper here, or watch the “Looking Toward the Future – IOWN GF’s Vision” webinar here.
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