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Pre-Commercial Procurement in Optical Networking Domain

Radek Velc, Rudolf Vohnout, Josef Vojtěch, Pavel Škoda, Bartosz Belter*, Piotr Ridlichowski*,
and Chrysostomos Tziouvaras**
CESNET a.l.e., Czech Education and Scientific NETwork, Zikova 4, CZ-16000, Prague, Czech Republic
*PSNC, Polish Optical Internet Research Center, ul. Z. Noskowskiego 12/14, 61-704 Poznań, Poland
**GRNET, Greek Research & Technology Network, 56, Mesogion Av. 11527, Athens, Greece
Tel: +420 224 352 99, Fax: +420 224 320 269, e-mail: rudolf.vohnout@cesnet.cz
ABSTRACT
Public procurements are essential legislative procedures to ensure acquiring best possible costs, to meet the
needs of the procurer in terms of quality and quantity, time, and location. In this paper, we provide you with the
information about Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) procedures being beneficially experienced in a specific
area of Optical Networking in public sector, especially National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). To
optimize the usage of public funds for building beyond state-of-the-art public networks, this is the main goal of
the project: Communication Platform for Tenders of Novels Transport Networks (COMPLETE).
Keywords: Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP), Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI), Public Network
Operator. National Research and Education Network (NREN)

1. INTRODUCTION
A procurement requirements analysis represents the key element of every procurement activity. It aims to
precisely define the needs, technologies and services related to optical networking equipment. The services built
on top of the network are driven by the needs of the NREN community, which usually influences strategic
NREN decisions.
Public Procurement of Innovation occurs when public authorities act as a launch customer for innovative
goods or services. These are typically not yet available on a large-scale commercial basis and may include
conformance testing. Innovation in the public procurement context takes into account: innovation in the design
and delivery of public services, the procurement of innovative goods and services Innovative procurement
processes and models. The powerful benefits of PPI seeking more innovative procurement solutions can yield
benefits for public authority and private sector, as well as wider society.
Pre-Commercial Procurement is an approach within the public procurement of innovation, developed
specifically for the procurement of Research and Development (R&D) services rather than actual goods and
services; if the goods or services developed during the R&D phase are to be procured, this would need to be
based on a specific procurement process.
Within the COMPLETE project, except others, Public Network Operators share and disseminate their
experience with public procurement procedures to maintain their competitiveness and being cost efficient in the
specific field of optical networks. Public sector, in order to efficiently implement beyond state-of-the-art optical
equipment in today’s networks needs to synchronize efforts by building a common procurement roadmap
specifying common requirements in short term and mid-to-long term areas of common European interests.

2. MOTIVATION & APPROACH

Public procurement procedure which should lead to the new technology implementation usually has several
drawbacks, regardless of the country in which it is announced. Public tenders generally have very strict
regulations which, in many cases, lead to appeals by unsuccessful candidates and might result in significant
delays in new technology implementation.
PPI/PCP procedures have been adopted in many other sectors, like health or transportation. Such approaches
enable to fully utilize collaborative potential between procurers and vendors. The force is driven by benefits for
all involved parties. Public Network Operators must keep up with the pace of other sectors, the efforts made in
this area is unexceptionable. Yet, the situation in some NRENs is complicated as they do not have enough
resources/staff to be focused on the procedures beyond legislative necessities, so collaboration amongst NRENs
and support the NREN community represent the solution.
Regarding the latest technological challenges, it has been discovered that new technologies usually “lay” in the
labs or in vendors safe boxes pots and wait to be released in a specific time to have the biggest market success
possible. On the other hand, in many cases, there are special groups of users (typically, NRENs) who have
different requirements on optical network equipment/services than traditional Telecommunication companies
(TELCOs). The collaboration between these entities, within PPI/PCP often realized in the scope of Non-
Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), allows:
– Economic growth through research and development and investments optimization
– Increasingly better, advanced products and services

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– New solutions to the challenges faced by the Information Society

Notice: Public Procurement in general represents about 19% of gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU
market (source: www.innovation-procurement.org ).
Using PPI and PCP mechanisms public buyers can influence the market towards innovative and
desired solutions while they must also avoid wasting the resources.

Figure 1. PPI procedure being successfully experienced within NRENs participating in COMPLETE project.

3. PRELIMINARY RESULTS
3.1 Cooperating vendors
The COMPLETE project partners share, present and analyze the preliminary plans and roadmap from 8 optical
transmission equipment vendors. All vendors recognize the key challenge that they need to address at the
following years is the expected massive increase in network capacity demand.
3.2 Cooperation with all Public Network Operators
The collaborative effort is aimed to all Public Network Operators (including regional) as their experience,
strategies and plans are often different from NRENs´ and important for further development of optical network
technologies of any scale – (inter)national, regional, metropolitan etc.
3.3 NDAs with vendors
NDA is an essential legal instrument which enables further cooperation of the parties, faster development of
innovations, and it also prevents wasting of resources which might occur without having the access to the non-
public (confidential) information of the other party. Because of its confidentiality, NDAs belong to delicate
sphere of any Public Network Operator/vendor collaboration. NDAs with the interested vendors might enhance
PCP procedures; sometimes the crucial information is conditioned by the NDA. There have been 5 NDAs
concluded within COMPLETE consortium.
3.4 Optical network technologies and services discovered within PCP
5 key technology approaches and 1 new service based on technological approach have been discovered by
COMPLETE project partners, e.g.:
- Super-channels and adaptive line rates
- Flexible spectrum
- Colourless, Directionless and Contentionless ROADMs [1]
New Approach
One of the key outcomes from the PCP process based on the analysis of user requirements is a new
technology or new technological approach that is not yet public available on the market as well as not included
in internal roadmap of the cooperating vendors. The most significant issue here is to persuade vendor of choice
to implement and/or support desired feature/technology in their products lines (current or upcoming). Research,
development and innovation are usually partially or fully supported by public funds and end users are connected
to the public network by a dark fibre. This means that the cost effectiveness is under public scrutiny.
Very important is approach that advanced technologies have enabled fully optical communication, without
usually costly Optical-Electronic-Optical (OEO) conversions. So it is possible to achieve an end-to-end signal
transfer between the end users.
The usefulness of the photonic transfer is not limited to a particular field of science, which means that a
common service can be shared by all disciplines and all users can be effectively served by a unified network
infrastructure. The leading example is Alien Spectrum as a Service (ASaaS). Indeed, requests for services based

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on ASaaS in fiber lines are coming from several fields. The implementation of ASaaS is a development task with
strong cost-effectiveness motivation of fiber sharing because the fiber lease costs are responsible for roughly
65% of the overall network cost. ASaaS technology like other technologies set, agreed and clarified by the
consortia members (400G, 1T, Flexgrid, Flexrate, full Software Defined Network (SDN) capability etc.), is not
commercially available on the market at the time of writing of this paper.
ASaaS is in principle a transmission between end users (U2U) in a multi-domain environment. Each
transmission service or equipment vendor expects to deliver their service in just one domain, not in all. In ASaaS
concept, all vendors should only use a part of the fiber frequency spectrum and keep other parts free for the
ASaaS. In this concept, in general, the transmitted signals are sent and received by end users’ equipment. The
end users can use digital and non-digital transmissions in parallel, as they see fit, without causing any
interference. Such scenario also effectively prevents monopoly of any single vendor. In general, ASaaS focuses
on end users’ requirements, including requirements expected in the future. This future planning is based on
experience with Early Adopters and their projects.
As of late 2015, some of the end users might not be sufficiently aware of fundamentally new applications
which are enabled by Alien Spectrum as a Service (ASaaS) in fiber lines. This new cost effective technology
was successfully tested in CESNET and will be developed further. The ASaaS is multi-domain service enabling
end user to end user connection by non-digital signals. An important benefit of the ASaaS is that the end users
do not have to be aware of the underlying connection details of last miles, metropolitan fiber lines, regional fiber
lines, NREN fiber lines, Cross Border Fibers (CBF) and GÉANT backbone fiber lines. Alien Waves, Photonic
Services and other non-digital services are implemented without OEO conversion, and are running in fiber lines
without compromising digital transfer. Alien spectrum allows fundamentally new utilization of fiber networks;
attract new customers and Early Adopters with positive experience.

Figure 2. Flexible spectrum allocation - key technology discovered within PCP procedure [1].
3.5 COMPLETE project deliverables
Three deliverables have been published, for further info see http://photonics-complete.eu/publications/.
3.6 Best practises
Three best practices documents from various countries in public procurement domain have been published.

4. STEPS TAKEN AND GOALS

PPI related:
1. To create a database of Public Network Operators and Vendors
2. To contact vendors and conclude NDAs.
3. To access internal information (e.g. internal roadmaps) based on NDAs.

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PCP related:
a. To define new technological requirement (solely in cooperation with NREN users)
b. To persuade subset of vendors to implement feature and/or technology based on NREN requirements.
c. On top of that it is appropriate to experimentally verify new product/technology in NREN network (usually
multi-vendor environment) in order to mitigate compatibilities issues.

5. CONCLUSIONS
Members of the COMPLETE consortium are now discussing additions and updates which are needed for
delivering effective solution providing principal advantages to the end users.
Delivering this important change and empowering the associated innovation must be accelerated by
collaboration with the network vendors. PCP procedures are the essential instruments for all the Public Network
Operators. Advanced end users are likely to start requesting beyond state-of-the-art technologies, like Spectrum
as a Service (SaaS), not some of the older, yet more common technologies (such as the 1 Tbit transmission, or
a 400 G transmission, Flexgrid, Flexrate etc.). To satisfy their needs, Public Network Operators (e.g. NRENs)
have to utilize all the potentials including Public Network Operator/vendor relations, information sharing and
international collaboration. Crucial importance of COMPLETE in this process is its potential buying power.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been done within the project COMPLETE which has received funding from the EU Framework
Programme for Research and Innovation H2020 under Grant Agreement No 645568.
Copyright 2016 @COMPLETE.

REFERENCES
[1] C. Tziouvaras, B. Belter, P. Rydlichowski, A. Binczewski, R. Vohnout, J. Vojtěch, J. Radil, L.
Altmannová, and S. Šíma: High-tech R&D roadmap – The first version of the database, 2015