The 17th IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management (IM 2021) will be held on May 17-21, 2021, in Bordeaux, France. Held in odd-numbered years since 1989, IM 2021 follows the 33 years tradition of NOMS and IM as the primary IEEE Communications Society’s forum for technical exchange on management of information and communication technology focusing on research, development, integration, standards, service provisioning, and user communities.

IM 2021 will focus on the theme of “Intelligent Management of Open and Highly Programmable Networks”. It aims to capture recent results, emerging approaches and technical solutions for dealing with resilience and sustainability of network and service management in highly dynamic environments. Furthermore, the sudden and important uptake of work-from-home and the promise of the post-digital era are rising new challenges and exacerbating the dynamic nature of the communication infrastructure, pushing additional requirements on networks in terms of quality, resilience and sustainability. This is also accelerating the adoption of Artificial Intelligence advances along with the openness and programmability of network infrastructures, to make these more flexible and adaptive. In addition to this theme, IM 2021 will cover a wide range of topics of interest within the field in integrated network and service management. IM 2021 will offer five types of sessions: technical, experience, poster, panel and dissertation. High quality will be assured through a well-qualified Technical Program Committee and stringent peer review of paper submissions.

Topics of Interest

Authors are invited to submit papers that fall into or are related to the topic areas that are listed below. In addition, we invite submissions of proposals for demonstrations, exhibits, technical panels, tutorials and workshops, as well as experience session papers and dissertation papers.

Management and Control of Networks

Enterprise and Campus Networks
Data Center Networks
Industrial Networks and TSN
Cyber Physical Systems
IP Networks
5G/6G
Wireless & Mobile Networks, including optical, overlay, access, SCADA, IoT, VANET, etc.

Programmable Networks and Automation

Software-Defined Networking
Network Virtualization
Network (Data, Control, Management planes) Programmability
Network Slicing
Management & Orchestration
Network Functions Virtualization/Service Function Chaining
Cloud Native Networking, DevOps, Network Automation, Zero-Configuration Networking Network Telemetry

Management and Control of Communication Services

Information Technology
Services Virtual Networking Services
XaaS and Cloud Services
Multimedia Services
Content Delivery Services
Social Networking Services
Security Services IoT Services
Network Resilience and High-Precision Networks

Management Algorithms and Architectures

Centralized Management
Distributed Management
Autonomic Networks and Self-Management
Management Protocols
Fog and Mobile Edge Computing
Lambda Functions and Elastic Management
Data Analytics for Management
Policy-Based Management
Intent-Based Management
Network Optimization

Management Functions and Practical Approaches

FCAPS: Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security
Case Studies and Practical Experiences
Business-Driven Management Services
Measurement and Validation
SLA Management, QoS and QoE
Energy Management
Deployment of Services
Operations Support Systems

Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Network and Service Management

Management with AI
Markov Chains and Management
Machine Learning and Deep Learning
Management with Big Data
Mobile Agents

Management Efforts for Pandemics and Crisis Situations (COVID-19)

Contact and Activity Tracing
Network/Service Management Support
Network Measurements
Network Adaptation
Case Studies and Practical Experiences