Message from Chairman　

Yukio Ito
Chairman
Okinawa Open Laboratory

The Okinawa Open Laboratory (OOL) was established in May 2013 under the vision: to establish an international research and development institute in Okinawa with an ambitious mission: to promote the practical application and dissemination of next-generation　ICT platform technologies.  It started as a unique international institute in the world openly performing the R&D activities that goes beyond the organizations of member companies, governments, industries and communities about “the fusion of SDN and Cloud technologies” that also goes beyond the technical domains.

With deep appreciation to the partners and stakeholders giving great supports since the establishment of OOL, for having more understanding and cooperation, here I will introduce our activities until now.

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<Research and Development>

The above mentioned “the fusion of SDN and Cloud technologies” is targeting fusion and integration of virtualization technologies on network and servers that belong different technology area in ICT infrastructure technologies.  In addition to SDN and OpenStack, other technical elements such as NFV, various type of OSSs, multi cloud integration, SDx, etc. have been studied, investigated and evaluated.  As their use cases, new type of ICT infrastructure services have been developed and evaluated such as SD-WAN and efficient operation of data centers corresponding with speedy and various mode of operations.  To realize these new services, an OOL original OSS, OF-Patch (OpenFlow Patch) and network test automation tool NetTester for large scale and complicated network system have been developed.

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Thereafter, under the background that emerging new digital technologies such as IoT, AI, big data, etc., Digital Transformation that applies these technologies for the innovation of industries and society has been come up.  OOL has also started the activities about the use case that applies “the fusion of next-generation ICT infrastructure technologies and digital technologies” for solving issues in real industries and local communities from the viewpoint of regional contribution.  To find out real issues, activity groups SDSG (Service Design Study Group) and SIDG (Social Innovation Design Group) have been set up to address local issues extraction and analysis through cross-industry exchanges and from the SDGs point of view.  Through various workshops and discussions with local governments and organizations, two research projects (use case research) have been started from the “Data Utilization” point of view.

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First project is a joint research project with a taxi operator in Okinawa for the purpose   contributing to efficient and safety taxi operation by collecting, storing, analyzing and visualizing the data from taxi onboard machines and drive recorders.  Second project is a joint project with a theme of solving issues on tourism and transportation in Okinawa.  OOL has built a platform to store and utilize the open data of public transportation and tourism information named OTTOP (Okinawa Transit and Tourism Open data Platform).  It has been designed as a common platform that can be utilized to solve not only a specific issue but also other various issues.  Currently enhancement of retrieval services utilizing tourism and transportation data and new services are being developed on the OTTOP.

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In these activities OOL utilizes and evaluates various OSSs collaborating with international OSS development communities and standardization organizations like LFN, OpenStack, OPNFV, FIWARE and MEF, publishes OSSs newly developed by OOL and presents them in the international events hosted by these organizations.  For a recent example, OOL exhibited 5G network slicing demonstration in MEF19 collaborating with an OOL member company and a research partner and got “MEF3.0 Proof of Concept Awards”.  Also OOL developed and published the Meteoroid as a new OSS that complement the function of IoT platform FIWARE and presented it in the FIWARE Global Summit.  Other than that OOL is collaborating in various way such as getting certification from related organizations, exchanging and collaborating by mutually joining as a member with the related organizations.

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With the advantage of Okinawa’s position located between Japan and Asia, we are promoting the collaboration with Asian countries and regions like Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, etc.  Especially in research area, OOL establishes the international collaboration scheme with III (Institute for Information Industry) and NCTU (National Chiao Tung University) in Taiwan and ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) in Korea.   For III, OOL accepted engineers from III resident in Okinawa and performed joint research mainly in SDN.  For NCTU, OOL established Joint Research Center with NCTU and performed joint research about ONOS/CODE and 5G.  For 5G, we are jointly evaluating the free5GC developed by NCTU.  For ETRI, OOL has performed the joint research about inter-cloud collaboration technology under the scheme of Northeast Asia OSS Promotion Forum.

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OOL prepares and provides Testbed and Databed as a common environment and platform to accelerate above mentioned various joint research activities.  Testbed is a common platform to develop and evaluate the latest research outcome in OOL.  Several OSSs compose the Testbed and it interconnected with external test environment like OOL members company’s environment to keep expandability and flexibility.  Databed has been designed as a common platform to accelerate data utilization and it is used in many projects.

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<Human Resource Development>

In addition to the research activities, OOL performs human resource development under the understanding that it is necessary to develop capable engineers who will follow and bear the technologies for the promotion of technologies.  Originally basic training courses such as technical seminars and hands-on training had been widely conducted for more than 3,000 attendees to raise the engineer level and increase the number of engineers mainly for students in Okinawa.  Such stage has finished and currently “Specialist Development Program” has been promoted that aims to develop practical engineers who can immediately join in the actual industries.  Students and young engineers are the object of this program and participants will develop a program or solution from planning phase during about 7 months training period with getting supports and advices from mentors who are experts in ICT industry.  Output of this program are presented in a Program Contest and the winner can get a prize to join an international students exchange session with Taiwan NCTU or Malaysia UniKL (Universiti Kuala Lumpur).  Until now more than 100 engineers have completed this program and graduates are active at the forefront of ICT companies and communities.

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<Providing exchange opportunities including International Conferences and International Exchanges>

We are hosting a unique international conference in Okinawa named Okinawa Open Days planned, organized and operated by OOL.  Its theme has expanded from SDN and cloud to 5G, digital technologies, data utilization, regional contribution, etc. with following the expansion of OOL’s research area and its scale has also expanded to more than 1,000 participants in 4 days event.  In addition to the Okinawa Open Days, international symposiums and students exchanges in Asia have also been held co-hosted with III and NCTU in Taiwan and UniKL in Malaysia for Asian engineers to easily attend international exchanges.  Also the OOL Forum which is an opportunity for engineers to exchange latest technical information and opinions in casual way and OOL Summit which is an opportunity for executives of member companies to exchange business information and opinions have also been held.

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As I introduced here, OOL has tackled various activities from the use case point of view with pursuing the ideal situation of technologies, industries and society as a fusion and exchange place of open technologies and engineers.  While correspondence to the new world and new life-style is required, expectations and requirements for ICT and digital technologies has increased more and more in industries and society.  We will keep continuing technical contributions and social contributions with sticking to the use case, providing exchange place and challenging various activities.

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Further supports, cooperation and guidance to our activities are much appreciated.