Nextworks s.r.l., located in Pisa (Italy), is a dynamic R&D SME that was created in 2002 as a spin-off company of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Division of the Consorzio Pisa Ricerche (CPR–DITEL). Nextworks operates in the ICT sector, collaborating with some of the major European manufacturers and operators (e.g., Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Wind, Interoute). The company’s team boasts long-term experience and proved skills in the frameworks of Control Plane technologies for wired and wireless transport networks, design and development of complex software on both traditional and embedded platforms and in Quality of Service (QoS) in packet networks, IP telephony, digital video encoding and streaming. The specific nature and technical position of these activities require a leading-edge, up-to-date know-how and technical expertise. In order to fulfil this requirement, Nextworks participates actively in EU-funded research projects (within H2020, FP7 and FP6), cooperating with both academic and industrial partners, as an important and preferential investment to develop and update know-how on selected topics. Nextworks has a solid background on design, development and integration of full networking protocol and SDN/NFV stacks. Nextworks research team features high expertise and know-how in design and implementation of SDN architectures and controllers, NFV MANO components, service composition frameworks, and joint cloud+network resource orchestration architectures, with hands-on experience with OpenDaylight and ONOS, OpenStack (with main focus on Neutron, Heat and Ceilometer modules), OpenBaton, Open Source Mano. Nextworks has already been active in standardization activities (e.g., in ETSI NFV, IETF/IRTF and OGF) and the R&D team has recently leaded the ETSI Specialist Task Force for Gap Analysis for NFV interface specifications and OpenStack APIs and has served as member of the ETSI CITI team for the organization, execution and reporting of the 2nd and 3rd NFV Plugtest in ETSI Headquarters.
Nextworks is participating in several H2020 projects on 5G (5G-Crosshaul and SELFNET from 5G PPP Phase 1, 5G-Transformer SLICENET, 5Gcity, 5G-MEDIA and BlueSpace from 5G PPP Phase 2, 5G EVE and 5GCroco from Phase 3), coupled with activities on 5G Verticals industries like IoT and Factory of the Future in the SYMBIOTE, MONROE and COMPOSITION projects. Quite often Nextworks successfully covers roles of WP and task leader for the activity items of specific expertise.
Nextworks has also strong expertise in design and development of control component as consultancy service to renowned vendors (Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent/Nokia, Italtel).
Profile of key persons:
- Giacomo Bernini, (Male), received the Italian Laurea degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2006. In 2007 he worked as network systems consultant and contributed to the development of a wholesale order management platform for Vodafone Italy. Currently he is R&D Technical Coordinator at Nextworks, and his research interests include SDN, NFV, 5G network slicing and orchestration. He participated to design, development and demonstration activities in several FP6, FP7 and H2020 projects (PHOSPHORUS, GEYSERS, ETICS, MAINS, CONTENT, TRILOGY 2, PACE, LIGHTNESS, MONROE, ORCHESTRA, SELFNET), as well as to industrial projects on WSON GMPLS, Multi-Layer PCE, and NFV technologies among the others. He is currently active in the H2020 5G-EVE, SLICENET, 5G-MEDIA and LOCUS projects, and he is contributing in ETSI NFV as leader of the Specialist Task Forces on NFV API conformance test specification (STF 557 and STF 583) and OpenAPI specification for NFV (STF 563 and STF 586).
- Matteo Pardi, (Male), received the Italian Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2010. He started as iOS developer in a small software company and then he moved to a hardware manufacturer, working as a software engineer on electronics devices for nuclear physics applications. After joining the R&D department at Nextworks, his interest has focused on IoT and Industry 4.0, SDN, NFV and Cloud Computing. He has worked in several H2020 European projects such as SYMBIOTE and COMPOSITION, and he’s currently active in H2020 EFACTORY and LOCUS. He is also involved in other IoT and Industry 4.0 projects of Nextworks Products and Services department.
- Elian Kraja, (Male), received the degree in Computer Science at the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2013. In 2009 he worked as a web developer at “Global Service Group”. In 2012 he moved in Florence, at TRII as a System Engineer working mostly on Enterprise systems. In 2015 he joined the R&D department at Nextworks as a Software Engineer and his research interests include Cloud Computing, SDN and NFV. He participated in FP7 and H2020 projects (FP7 Trilogy2, FP7 Mobile Cloud Networking, H2020 5G Crosshaul, H2020 Selfnet, H2020 5G Transformer) and in industrial projects on NFV technologies. He has been involved in standardization activities, contributing to ETSI NFV as part of the special task force on Identification of Gaps between ETSI NFV requirements and Open Stack APIs, and as a member of the ETSI Plugtests team. He is currently active in the H2020 projects 5G-City, 5G-EVE and LOCUS. He is also contributing in ETSI MEC and ETSI NFV TST, as part of special task forces on MEC Testing Framework and NFV API Conformance test specification.