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StableNet® Innovation Lab – One Year of Open Innovation

May 14th 2024, Würzburg
An internal interview conducted by Melanie Weber (Marketing Projects & Content Creation Manager @ Infosim®) with Dr. David Hock (Director of Research @ Infosim®).

With the StableNet® Innovation Lab, we have created a driver for open innovation and given innovation management at Infosim® a stronger structure and direction. The focus lies on the network management market and our StableNet® solution as well as on researching best practices and transferring them to real applications.

One year after the launch of the lab, a lot has changed and new additions have been added. In the following interview, Dr. David Hock (Director of Research at Infosim®) gives an overview of the past year and an outlook on what you can expect in 2024.

Image Julia Kerscher
Melanie Weber

Hello David, thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions. Let’s first look back at the beginnings of the StableNet® Innovation Lab. What was the initial focus?

Of course. Our projects in the StableNet® Innovation Lab go through a defined process. At the beginning, our focus was on initial contact with many different interest groups and stakeholders. Among other things, we used our regular meet-ups and Snapshot webinars to provide targeted insights into individual projects and arouse interest. Customers and partners have also actively expressed their interest in one or more projects via our StableNet® Community Portal, which has resulted in a number of valuable discussions with various interested parties as well as further opportunities for collaboration.

Image Julia Kerscher
Dr. David Hock
Image Julia Kerscher
Melanie Weber
How did you decide on your project topics?

The general subject areas of our projects are a cross-section of our Infosim® research projects. Here we are researching together with various project partners on similar topics such as AI, visualization, IoT, 2D/3D layouting, quantum communication and much more. We were also inspired by our participation in the TM Forum with our Catalyst on the topic of “Autonomous Networks Hyperloops VI“.

The more detailed project topics then arise on the one hand from feedback from customers and partners, but also from our own ideas and experiences. Our current topics range from AIOPs, quality of experience and IoT to visualization and quantum communication. Since the launch of the lab, we have steadily expanded the portfolio of topics and more topics will be added in the future.

Image Thomas Proksch
Dr. David Hock
Image Julia Kerscher
Melanie Weber
What phase are the projects currently in and have you already completed a project?

The projects are currently all in different phases. With the AI and visualization topics, for example, we are already very advanced and we have also set ourselves the goal of starting the pilot phase in these projects in 2024. A pilot represents the last phase of the process and means that we have a functioning code that runs continuously in a customer environment or with customer data. With some of the other topics, we are still in the initial phase or just have a PoC (Proof-of-Concept) or prototype. For us, a PoC means that the concept has been proven and has been run at least once. A prototype goes one step further and implies that we have a finished script or a finished portal that fulfills the requirement of running continuously so that we can show a demo at any time. However, none of the projects are complete yet. This will only be the case once the pilot phase has been successfully completed. The next step after that would be to pass it on to our development team, which would then work on integrating it into StableNet®.

Image Thomas Proksch
Dr. David Hock
Image Julia Kerscher
Melanie Weber
What else has changed in the first year?

In addition to the growing portfolio of topics, the biggest addition was probably the StableNet® Innovation Lab Collaboration Center, which launched with the StableNet® 24 Annual Release.

We have established our communication around the lab on three levels of visibility. On the public level, for example via YouTube or our landing page, we generally promote our lab and the subject areas in which we implement projects. On the second level we provide a more detailed overview of the individual projects in the StableNet® Community Portal, which is only accessible to customers and partners. Here, interested parties can also actively express their interest in one or more topics and sign up for the newsletter.

The last level is the Collaboration Center, which is exclusively for interested parties and project partners that are actively contributing. It offers a deeper insight into the topics and an interactive access to a wide range of additional information on the projects, such as planned functionalities, methodology, architecture and more. In addition, the Collaboration Center provides an easy way for our project partners to share detailed feedback or further ideas on the content.

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Dr. David Hock
Image Julia Kerscher
Melanie Weber
What can we expect this year?

Our main goal this year is to bring as many projects as possible to pilot status, as this will in turn bring us closer to the integration in StableNet® and the point of commercial use. We are of course also planning to add other topics to our portfolio. One addition, which was added at the beginning of this year and which we want to establish further, are standard sessions on project topics for which there has been a lot of interest. These sessions take place every 3 months on a fixed date for half an hour, at which customers and partners can dial in and freely exchange ideas without any obligation.

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Dr. David Hock
Image Julia Kerscher
Melanie Weber
Thanks for your time David. I look forward to seeing what else awaits us at the StableNet® Innovation Lab this year!

Anytime with pleasure, thank you!

Image Thomas Proksch
Dr. David Hock

Dr. David Hock

Director of Research @ Infosim® GmbH & Co. KG
David is coordinating the research activities at Infosim®, where he is working on several national and international research projects with a main scope being on the Future of Automated Network & Service Management. Additionally, he is also coordinating the cooperation with leading academic institutions and relevant industry partners. Prior to working at Infosim®, David was working as a research assistant and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Würzburg where he graduated with a Dr. rer. nat. degree in computer science.
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