The document discusses how SMEs are currently underrepresented in using experimental facilities and networking testbeds. It aims to better involve SMEs through the FUSION project. FUSION will educate SMEs and testbeds about each other's needs to foster more collaboration. The current situation finds SMEs lacking information and resources to engage while testbeds may not adequately support or understand SME requirements. Feedback reveals SMEs could benefit from independent testing, expertise, and access to large experimental platforms. A federation like FED4FIRE offers greater resources and support for experimenters. Moving forward, FUSION will clarify experiment methodologies, provide unified interfaces and technical support, adapt business models, and find synerg

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Jean-Charles Point
FUSION Coordinator
pointjc@jcp-consult.com
Jean-Charles Point, JCP-C
pointjc@jcp-consult.com

2. Presentation summary
• FUSION introduction
• SME situation in experimental facilities
• What we can bring and receive to/from regions/cluster
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3. FUSION Introduction
• Acronym: FUSION
• Full Title: Cost Effective Integration and Fusion of SME Communities with
Network Research Tools and Facilities
• Type of Funding Scheme: Support Action (SA)
• Duration: 24 Months
• Work Program Topic: FP7-ICT-2011-8 Objective: ICT-2011.1.6 (e) Call 8
• CONSORTIUM
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Partner Name Country
JCP-CONSULT SAS France
MARTEL GMBH Switzerland
REDZINC SERVICES LIMITED Ireland
QuartzSpark Limited Ireland

4. FUSION project objectives
In short: inform SMEs, collect feedback on SMEs requirements and
provide recommendations to match experimental facilities offers to
SMEs requirement:
•Overall objective:
– To focus specifically on involving SMEs more in the FIRE facilities
•Key sub-objectives:
– Educate SMEs and SME clusters about the FIRE networking capabilities
– Educate the FIRE testbeds about the user requirements from SMEs in
certain industry verticals, focusing especially on the network
requirements aspects (security, confidentiality, guaranteed capacity
reserved, segregation of capacity, process of putting tools together in
federation)
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5. Project process

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7. Presentation summary
• FUSION introduction
• SME situation in experimental facilities
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8. Current situation
• Rich offer of experimental facilities (more
then 100)
• More used by academic community (even
in open calls)
• Weak involvment of SMEs:
– In current calls
– Even in more « industry driven » experimental
facilities

9. Why aren’t SMEs much involved yet?
• Lack of information
– Few SMEs in ICT calls
– Complex messages to be delivered
– Contacts complex: clusters, poles, regions, larger
networks,…
– Needs very diverse
• Lack of time from SMEs?
• Cost including time spent:
– Fundamental issue
– More general issue for SME: to understand the
benefits and rewards of experimental facilities

10. Why aren’t SMEs much involved yet?
• Lack of support from facilities?:
– Some research driven
– Some documentation./ processes lacking
– Support is sometimes given at a cost (more mature faciltiies)
• Problems of confidentiality?
– Disclosure of technologies/ideas
– Insufficient guarantees?
• Offers from testbeds not adequate?
These questions are under investigation

11. Feedback from a more industrial testbed
• Commercial testbed: cost for support and daily
use of the testbed
• SMEs not much involved, and mainly come from
collborative projects
• What works: ‘win win’ relation
– SME enriches the testbed and receives some tests
results in return
– Commercial interest (tesbed provides additional
customers)
– Acceleration of product development

12. Some early feedback from SMEs on
benefits
• User feedback on their experiment, possibility to adress user requirements on a
professional way during development:
• Understand benefits of user feedback during R&D
• Appreciate support:
• Problem analysis
• Definition of the methodology/panels
• Results analysis
• Access during development to large scale testing facility/heterogeneous ‘real life’
environment with real users
• Independent performance benchmark (compared to customer tests)
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13. Some early feedback from SMEs on
benefits (2)
• Access to mature tool for testing (no time lost)
• Low initial cost:
• Planetlab as an example: low introductory costs and time to understand
the features
• Access to expertise both from platform team (test definition) and european
projects (specific technical expertise)
• Access to other players
• Additional technical support:
• Prototyping
• Expertise in the products themselves
• Training in the use of the testbed

14. Type of services
• Very diverse:
– Minimal at almost no cost: availability of a large scale
experimental platform (openlab/planetlab) in which an SME can
make various tests during R&D stage
– Full support: test definition, set-up and experiment
– User testing (Living Lab like) during R&D and validation: includes
full support test definitions and results analysis
• Diverse business models:
– FREE use (collaborative model),
– free use + cost for consultancy,
– price per day of use and consultancy
– …

15. Fed4fire: benefits of a federation
• FED4FIRE federates 13 FIRE facilities (test-bed
facilities that each target a specific community
within the Future Internet ecosystem)
• Advantages to experimenters:
• Easier to find the right resources to translate their
ideas into actual experiments
• Same set of tools and protocols to access the testbed
• Much larger sets of tools and tests available
• Possibility to combine experiment
• Better support and insurance of perrenity
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16. Some ways forward
• Clarify the experiment methodology in R&D cycles and gain:
– What practical benefits can LL give (product definition, etc…)
– What are the cycles of experiments and benefits (bug fixing, acceleration, etc.)
– Success stories but not enough
• Provide unified interface
• Provide technical support:
– Education on tesbted
– Experiments definitions
– Results analysis
– Additional technical support
• Adapt business models (some testbeds are not suited for SMEs)
• Adapt actions to different SMEs categories (technology, size, area,..)
• Find original ‘win win’ situations

17. Thanks!!!
www.sme4fire.eu
info@sme4fire.eu