Scientific Partnership
Alcatel-Lucent and INRIA inaugurate their labs

On Wednesday, July 2, in the presence of Eric Besson, France's Secretary of State for the Digital Economy, Olivier Baujard, CEO of Alcatel France and Michel Cosnard, CEO of INRIA, inaugurated their joint research laboratory covering research into standalone networks. The aim of the partnership is to be able to design communication networks for the future.

The bountiful alliance of Public Research and R&D

On Wednesday, July 2, in Paris, many researchers, scientists, industrial figures and INRIA and Alcatel Lucent staff members attended the inauguration of the joint laboratory.

To open the conference, Eric Besson, Olivier Baujard and Michel Cosnard all stressed, in one voice, the bountiful alliance of Public Research and R&D. The latter should make it possible to resolve the fundamental science problems that at present haunt industrial companies. The cooperation between INRIA and Alcatel-Lucent fits into this approach. The Secretary of State also added that such cooperation plays a part in developing a knowledge-based economy, and in supporting French research work in worldwide competition.

Michel Cosnard, CEO of INRIA

Eric Besson, France's Secretary of State for the Digital Economy

Olivier Baujard, CEO of Alcatel France

The CEOs of Alcatel Lucent and INRIA highlighted the "virtuous circle" of research and technological transfers to explain the coming together of their respective organizations. Another reason for the partnership lies in the quality of the teams of researchers, and in their motivation to work together on subjects with significant scientific and economics stakes.

Tomorrow's networks: Standalone, organized, safe and intelligent

Olivier Audouin

Albert Benveniste

After the opening speeches, Olivier Audouin, Operational Director Albert Benveniste, Scientific Director, presented the joint laboratory and its operation. They restated the new unit's aim: creating tomorrow's networks for managing the growth of Internet. Alcatel Lucent is working from a real-life observation: current networks are more and more complex and they continue to be managed manually, something that over time raises costs while causing a fall in the quality of service. One question comes up: How to relieve network operators of network management and maintenance tasks? One answer: Implementing standalone networks that are organized, safe and intelligent. Such are the challenges affecting the new lab.

To create tomorrow's networks, the joint lab is betting on the scientific excellence of its 55 researchers, including 18 young researchers. The search activity is organized around three main themes: Automating network management, self-optimizing wireless networks and the semantic network.

A major challenge: Quality of service

Participants of the roundtable

The inauguration finished up with a roundtable on the scientific, economic and societal challenges posed by the themes covered by the new lab. This roundtable moderated by a journalist brought together the following participants: François Baccelli, Director of Research at INRIA, Member of the French Academy of Science; Christian Grégoire, Scientific Director at Alcatel Lucent; Laurent Kott, Director General of INRIA Transfert; Denis Rouffet, Executive Director, LTE Products Strategy with Alcatel Lucent. Governance for standalone networks raises a number of questions for telecoms operators. How to ensure that standalone networks are self-managing themselves correctly? How to ensure the quality of service, an essential factor when it comes to getting these new networks adopted by their customers?