CMS is part of a research community developing the internet, but the internet is now almost 50 years old, and designed long before many of today’s challenges were apparent. Mobility, device heterogeneity, peer-to-peer relationships and traffic, trust management and web services are all now becoming major problems for current technologies. Both US and Japanese governments have instigated large-scale programmes intended to define a next generation internet, and the European Union has begun its own Future Internet initiative.

The kick-off meeting in Bled brought together government ministers, academics and industry leaders to discuss what Europe needs from the internet in coming decades. This resulted in a Future Internet ‘manifesto’, the Bled declaration. This vision will shape forthcoming calls in the EU’s Framework Programme 7. For the sixty FP7 projects already running, the effort is on shepherding related research projects along a cohesive axis. Collaborations are sought through six working groups:

• network architecture and mobility
• the internet of things
• content creation and delivery
• services and architectures
• trust, security, and privacy
• experimental facilities and testbeds

But the real focus is interdisciplinary collaboration, with almost half of each group comprising ‘outsiders’ from other areas.

For CMS, the Future Internet is vindication of its approach: there is already widespread agreement across the participants that semantics and services will play key roles in any future internet. CMS participant project ServiceWeb 3.0 is one of the coordinators, and CMS co-chair John Domingue will also co-chair the services and architectures group.

Forthcoming events related to the Future Internet include a continuation of the Bled event at the Future Internet Assembly in Madrid, and the Future Internet Symposium, a research conference exploring the cross-domain issues for semantics and services. The services working group wiki is publicly readable.