ARCFIRE will bring RINA from labs into the real-world. RINA, the Recursive InterNetwork Architecture, is an innovative “back-to-basics” network architecture that solves current limitations and facilitates full integration between distributed computing and networking. RINA addresses the challenges that drive the communications industry in moving from dedicated hardware to almost completely virtualised infrastructure. The next shift, 5G, on the horizon for 2020, will change the communication industry even more significantly. Now is the right time for ARCFIRE to provide experimental evidence of RINA’s benefits, at large scale, in compelling and realistic business cases, thus motivating RINA adoption. ARCFIRE will experimentally demonstrate RINA’s key benefits integrating current EC investment in advanced networks (IRATI, PRISTINE) and Future Internet testbeds (FIRE+) focusing on 5 goals: 1) Facilitate comparison of converged operator networks using RINA to operator’s current network designs; 2) Produce a robust RINA software suite ready for Europe to engage in large-scale deployments and long-living experiments; 3) Provide relevant experimental evidence of RINA benefits to network operators, their equipment vendors, application developers and end-users; 4) Build on the current EU Future Internet community and raise the number of organisations involved in RINA development and deployment; 5) Enhance the FIRE+ infrastructure with ready to use RINA software. ARCFIRE will have long-term sustainable impact on how we build infrastructure for the Networked Society. ARCFIRE’s deployed software suite will enable equipment vendors to shorten their innovation life cycle, network operators to run advanced networks addressing their needs in a future-proof fashion, European SME’s to find and exploit specialised markets and application developers to explore unseen opportunities. ARCFIRE’s consortium has the experience and resources to achieve these goals and provide this impact.

Europe needs to step up its efforts and strengthen its very own security capacities to secure its digital society, economy, and democracy. It is time to reconquer Europe’s digital sovereignty. The vision for Europe can only be to join forces across Europe’s research, industry and public sector and to include all talents not just those that have representation in the EU mainstream or are within big organizations. Diversity and inclusion are keys for success. Europe has incredible coverage and talent in the area of IT and cybersecurity. The area of cybersecurity is geographically fragmented across Europe for competences, and often also technically fragmented with problem-specific development of security solutions. There is no doubt that excellent research exists in Europe. Nevertheless, it is a fact that this research does not result in IT products and solutions that contribute to the European Single Digital Market. On contrary, a lot of research, also financed by EU ERC grants, is tested on real data in large US companies that cooperate with them. Europe has to and is already rethinking this strategy. CONCORDIA addresses the current fragmentation of security competence by networking diverse competences into a leadership role via a synergistic agglomeration of a pan-European Cybersecurity Center. The vision of CONCORDIA is to build a community a strong cooperation between all stakeholders, understanding that all stakeholders have their KPIs, bridging among them, and fostering the development of IT products and solutions along the whole supply chain. Technologically, it projects a broad and evolvable data-driven and cognitive E2E Security approach for the ever-complex ever-interconnected compositions of emergent data-driven cloud, IoT and edge-assisted ICT ecosystems.