IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management
17-21 May 2021 // Bordeaux, France
Virtual Conference

About

Message from the IM 2021 General Co-Chairs

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 17th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, IM 2021, to be held on 17 - 21 May 2021. Initially planned to take place in the great city of Bordeaux, France, the 2021 edition of IM finally takes place as an online virtual conference. The conference is sponsored by both IEEE Communications Society and IFIP TC6 Working Group 6.6.

IM 2021 focuses on “Intelligent Management of Open and Highly Programmable Networks”. During an entire week, there will be presentations, demonstrations, panels, keynotes, and multiple online networking opportunities addressing beyond the state of the art approaches and technical solutions for novel management paradigms to deal with the numerous emerging management issues in future infrastructures and services. IM 2021 received a total of 236 submissions from 40 countries. After a rigorous peer-review process, the Technical Program Committee (TPC) accepted 46 articles as regular papers. Several short papers, posters, demonstrations, experience papers, and Ph.D dissertations complement the program. The submissions and reviews were analyzed and discussed in-depth during an intense and enriching online TPC meeting, where the final paper selection took place. The result of this process is an exceptional technical program consisting of 12 technical sessions focusing on the latest research results on all hot topics in the areas of network intelligence and automation, SDN and network virtualization, edge computing, networking and intelligence, programmable data planes, clouds and microservices, performance management, wireless/radio networks, fault management, IoT, and security. The technical program is enriched by five Keynotes, three panels sessions, and one Distinguish Expert Panel that provide a broad forum for attendee participation. Furthermore, 6 workshops on emerging topics in management complete the conference.

Thanks to our amazing Organising Committee and with the support of our sponsors and supporting associations and communities, IM 2021 proposes an outstanding program with provides opportunities that cannot be found elsewhere to gain new insights, have stimulating discussions, exchange ideas, and network with international experts in this highly relevant and exciting field.

Toufik Ahmed and Olivier Festor, General Co-chairs, IFIP/IEEE IM 2021

Message from the IM 2021 Technical Program Co-Chairs

It is our pleasure to welcome you to the 17th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IFIP/IEEE IM 2021). This is the first time that IM is being held as a virtual conference, and despite the many challenges in organizing an event like this online, we are glad we could still keep up with the high quality and tradition of one of the main forums for technical exchange on management of information and communication technology.

The theme of this year's symposium focuses on “Intelligent Management of Open and Highly Programmable Networks”, and aimed to capture recent results, emerging approaches and technical solutions for dealing with resilience and sustainability of network and service management in highly dynamic environments. We received 191 technical submissions from all over the world. The papers were reviewed by an excellent program committee with 153 members drawn from industry and academia as well as many additional reviewers. All submitted papers underwent a rigorous review process with at least three reviews for every paper and a rebuttal phase. The review process concluded with a TPC meeting held virtually on Dec 7th, 2020. Out of the 191 papers submitted, 46 were accepted as regular papers - a very competitive acceptance ratio of 24.1%. Due to the high quality of the submitted papers, many good papers could not be selected to the main technical conference. The 26 best such papers were selected for the Mini-Conference program, organized into four sessions. In addition, 25 short papers were selected to be presented in three poster sessions. Besides, the IM 2021 technical program also includes a Dissertation Track (5 papers), an Experience Session Track (12 papers) and a Demo Track (10 demos). Major topics covered this year include: Fault Management, IoT, Security, Network Intelligence/Automation, Wireless/Radio Networks, SDN/Network Virtualization, Edge Computing/Networking/Intelligence, Programmable DataPlanes, NFV, Cloud/Microservices, and Performance Management

The conference program also features five outstanding keynote talks:

  • Dr. Pierre Imai will talk about Truly autonomous networking: an MNO's perspective. He is Head of the Research & Innovation Department at Rakuten Mobile, Inc. He participated in multiple EU and national research projects such as ANA and Onelab.
  • Prof. Gabi Dreo Rodosek will give a keynote on AI-Based Cyber Defence: Two sides of the medal. She is the Executive Director of the Research Institute CODE (Cyber Defence) and was awarded the European Medal from the Bavarian Minister for European Affairs and International Relations Dr. Beate Merk.
  • Dr. Diego R. Lopez will talk about Road to Aware-Nets. He is a Senior Technology Expert in Telefonica I+D and is currently in charge of the Technology Exploration activities within the GCTIO Unit.
  • Prof. Pan Hui will give a keynote on Practical Edge Computing for Mobile X Reality. He is the Nokia Chair in Data Science at the University of Helsinki and an ACM Distinguished Scientist.
  • Dr. Mérouane Debbah will give a talk about From Connected Things to Connected Intelligence. He is Vice-President of the Huawei France Research Center. He is an IEEE Fellow, a WWRF Fellow, and a Membre émérite SEE.

The following three panel sessions are also organized to present a discussion on intelligent network management by experts from academia and industry:

  • Do network engineers dream of full automation?
  • Research Challenges in Artificial Intelligence for Network Management
  • Intelligent Management of Future Industrial Networks

The technical program ends with a Distinguished Experts Panel, organized by Prof. Noura Limam (University of Waterloo, Canada), which will discuss the increasingly important subject “On the Management of Future (Open and Programmable) Networks: Challenges and Research Opportunities”. During the panel, we will have the opportunity to hear different opinions on this topic from five distinguished experts: Dr. Merouane Debbah (Huawei, France), Dr. Diego Lopez (Telefonica I+D, Spain), Marie-Paule Odini (HPE, France), Prof. Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia University, USA), Nurit Sprecher (Nokia, Israel).

This high quality program of IM 2021 demanded hard work and efforts from many people. Firstly, we would like to thank all the authors for their research contributions, which is paramount for keeping the technical excellence of IM. We also would like to thank the TPC members and the external reviewers for their hard work. Finally, we thank all the other members of the organizing committee for the exceptional amount of effort that was devoted during the last year in order to make IM 2021 a success.

We hope you enjoy IM 2021.

Yacine Ghamri-Doudane, Alberto E. Schaeffer-Filho and Joon-Myung Kang, TPC Co-chairs, IFIP/IEEE IM 2021

About

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 17th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, IM 2021, to be held on 17 - 21 May 2021 in Bordeaux, France. IM 2021 is sponsored by both IEEE Communications Society and IFIP Working Group 6.6.

Held in odd-numbered years since 1989, IM 2021 will follow the 33 years tradition of NOMS and IM as the primary IEEE Communications Society's forum for technical exchange on the management of information and communication technology focusing on research, development, integration, standards, service provisioning, and user communities.

IM 2021 will offer five types of sessions: technical, experience, poster, panel and dissertation. The five days of the conference brings together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry and provides a multidisciplinary trend-setting forum to explore the hottest areas of information and communications technology management related to industry, academia, government, enterprise and other market segments from around the world.

IM 2021 will focus on the theme of “Intelligent Management of Open and Highly Programmable Networks”. It aims to capture recent results, emerging approaches and technical solutions for dealing with resilience and sustainability of network and service management in highly dynamic environments. Furthermore, the sudden and important uptake of work-from-home and the promise of the post-digital era are rising new challenges and exacerbating the dynamic nature of the communication infrastructure, pushing additional requirements on networks in terms of quality, resilience and sustainability. This is also accelerating the adoption of Artificial Intelligence advances along with the openness and programmability of network infrastructures, to make these more flexible and adaptive. In addition to this theme, IM 2021 will cover a wide range of topics of interest within the field in integrated network and service management.

IM 2021 expects an outstanding program, providing opportunities that cannot be found elsewhere to gain new insights, have stimulating discussions, exchange ideas, and network with international experts in this highly-relevant and exciting field. IM 2021 will also present up-to-date approaches and technical solutions for novel management paradigms to deal with the new management issues in future infrastructures.

IM 2021 is an invitation to visit Bordeaux which is known for its exceptional 18th century architectural heritage and its wines. Bordeaux has also embraced modern architecture, with striking new buildings such as La Cité du Vin and Pont Chaban-Delmas.

Train, plane or highway: there are numerous ways of travelling to Bordeaux. Paris is just two hours away via the new high-speed train line and via numerous daily direct flights. We are looking forward to meeting you at IM 2021 in Bordeaux, France.

We hope that you will have a wonderful and memorable experience with our venue.

Toufik Ahmed and Olivier Festor, General Co-chairs, IFIP/IEEE IM 2021

Yacine Ghamri-Doudane, Alberto E. Schaeffer-Filho and Joon-Myung Kang, TPC Co-chairs, IFIP/IEEE IM 2021

Patrons