WAKEFIELD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (IOWN Global Forum) which seeks to create a smarter, more connected world, last week hosted its second Annual Member Meeting welcoming over 460 registrants from 87 organizations. Since its previous Annual Member Meeting, the Forum has nearly doubled in membership, adding 44 new organizations in the past year. Also introduced at the Meeting were five recently elected Directors Brad Booth of Microsoft, Chris Wright of Red Hat, Hey-Chyi Young of Chunghwa Telecom, Per Beming of Ericsson, and Dr. Ulrich Dropmann of Nokia Corporation.
Upon his election, Chris Wright, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Red Hat said, "Developing next generation networking technology to infuse data with compute is the foundation for a smarter and more sustainable future. As the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, Red Hat shares this vision with the IOWN Global Forum and looks forward to collaborating with industry and open source communities to bring it to life."
Per Beming of Ericsson on his re-election noted that the “IOWN Global Forum will shape the future of communication networks and how they will support a more sustainable society for all.”
Dr. Ulrich Dropmann from Nokia on the election and direction of the Forum said, “at Nokia, we believe IOWN Global Forum will play a key role in shaping the future of communication and Infrastructure technology. As a market leader in optical networking, we believe innovation in optical networking such as all-photonic networks, data-centric infrastructure will provide the backbone of the future. On that backbone the Information society will continue to strive, with particular emphasis on the sustainable support of wireless technology such as 5G-Advanced and 6G. By joining the IOWN GF Board, we will drive the IOWN GF mission to realize a smarter future for the world.”
On the election of Brad Booth, a Microsoft spokesperson said “Microsoft is a world leader in artificial intelligence and high speed computing that is accessible globally through our highly innovative WAN, Metro and Datacenter networks. The next 10 years will require many innovations to provide every person on our planet with limitless access to personalized and highly intelligent services that will help us navigate our daily lives. Microsoft shares IOWN’s vision to break free from today’s power and technology challenges and to navigate the next wave of innovations that our future will be built upon. Today we are pleased that Brad Booth, Principal Network Hardware Architect in Azure’s Hardware Architecture team, will be returning to the board of directors to ensure active participation of the cloud and networking community. Together as a community of innovators, we will meet the challenges of the next decade to build a new and better digital world.”
A spokesperson from Chunghwa Telecom shared “Madam Young has been Vice President of Telecommunication Laboratories of Chunghwa Telecom since Nov. 2017. Her professional fields include network management, cloud computing, network evolution architectures, software-defined infrastructure, telco cloud, and intelligent orchestration. Currently, she serves on the board of directors of NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) Alliance, the board of directors of Telecom Technology Center in Taiwan, as well as on the board of directors of KingwayTek (Digital Map and Telematics Provider in Taiwan). She also leads teams actively to participate in O-RAN Alliance and TMF Forum. She is one of the opinion leaders in Taiwan in the fields of telecom network evolution and cloud computing.”
Successful Second Annual Member Meeting
Attendees of the Annual Member Meeting had the opportunity to join in deep technical discussions of the recently released IOWN Global Forum Vision 2030 Roadmap and its deliverables, hear presentations from fellow members as well as participate in strategic, technical and use case discussions and Working Group Sessions.
IOWN Global Forum President and Chairperson, Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, made opening remarks and introduced five 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.
Dr. Geng Wu, an IOWN Global Forum Board Member and Treasurer, Intel Fellow and Chief Technologist for Wireless Standards at Intel, followed with a keynote address titled “Future Generation Computing and Networking” where he shared Intel's view on next generation computing and networking technologies. The talk highlighted the technology trends for delivering future digital world experiences and why the work of the IOWN Global Forum is fundamental and essential for the development of the necessary next generation global infrastructure including the 6G system.
In the meeting's technical tracks and building on this month's Vision 2030 Roadmap release, the Technical and Use Case Working Groups provided updates on Phase 2 work and studies items and activities, including Proof of Concept (PoC) work and technical evaluations. Membership also learned about ongoing work on new reference implementation models (RIMs) for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Industry and Artificial Intelligence-Integrated Communications (AIC) Entertainment use cases.
The three-day virtual meeting ended with closing comments from Dr. Masayuki Hattori, Secretary of the IOWN Global Form 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 the organization's second year.
Growth in Second Year
Membership in the forum has risen steadily to 95 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. In its second year, the IOWN Global Forum welcomed the following new members:
Sponsor Members: Accenture Japan Ltd., HAKUHODO.INC, KIOXIA Corporation, Mizuho Bank,Ltd, MUFG Bank, Ltd., PwC Japan LLC, Samsung Electronics, and VMware.
General Members: Advantest Corporation, AIOCORE Corporation, AISIN CORPORATION, DIC Corporation, Hitachi, Ltd., HONDA TSUSHIN KOGYO CO.,LTD., I-PEX Inc., IBIDEN Co.,Ltd., JX Nippon Mining & Metals Corporation, MIRISE Technologies Corporation, Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Net One Systems Co., Ltd, NetApp G.K., Nissan Chemical Corporation, OKI Electric Industry Co., Ltd., Olympus Corporation, Peers Co., Ltd., Preferred Networks, Inc., Renesas Electronics Corporation, Santec Corporation, SCSK Corporation, SHINKO ELECTRIC INDUSTRIES.CO.,LTD, SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation, SUMITOMO BAKELITE CO., LTD., Sumitomo Corporation Kyushu Co.,Ltd, Synopsys Inc., Toppan Inc., Toyo Ink SC Holdings Co., Ltd, and UNIADEX, Ltd.
Research and Academic Members: Keio University, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, Photonics Electronics Technology Research Association (PETRA), Photonics Industry & Technology Development Association (PIDA), The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and Tohoku University.
Details on IOWN Global Form and membership information can be found on the organization's website at https://iowngf.org.
About IOWN Global Forum
IOWN Global Forum’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 designs in areas such as photonics R&D, distributed computing, and use cases and best practices. Details on IOWN Global Forum and membership information can be found at: https://iowngf.org.
