During the past years, numerous novel architectures were developed for communication networks, the networked services or applications running of the core infrastructure, and its related protocol specifications. There are several activities undertaken for designing and developing novel network architectures that enable flexible, dynamic, and fully autonomic formation of network nodes as well as whole networks. It will allow dynamic adaptation and re-organization of the network according to the working, economical and social needs of the users. This is expected to be especially challenging in a mobile context where new resources become available dynamically, administrative domains change frequently, and the economic models may vary.

Assuming these new types of network architectures will emerge, the operation and management of those types of networks must undergo dramatic change compared to today's way of operating networks. Additionally, those networks will change the way services are deployed and delivered to users in a much more dynamic, personalized, location-aware way.

The goal of the seminar is to bring together researchers and engineers experienced in different emerging networking technologies, service technologies, and management technologies to discuss the future direction of those networks and specifically the operation and management issues concerned with these networks and services. The seminar will allow participants to advance issues associated with autonomic behavior in networking and services.

Another interesting question in this regard is the differences, synergies, and possible interaction between autonomic management and autonomic networking, or: how much management functionality should be built into the network, and how much should be implemented outside.

The seminar will consist of individual presentations and a set of group work, consisting of break-out sessions and plenary sessions in which results from individual groups are presented and discussed. Prior to the seminar, the participants are requested to provide an extended abstract on their talk. These abstracts will be used to structure the sessions with individual talks. The following aspects are of particular interest: pointing out current problems and promising directions, describing synergies, competitions and weaknesses of the different research areas mentioned in the description of the seminar topic, and identifying development perspectives, potential and recommendations for further research. As one outcome of the seminar, it is planned to edit a whitepaper on the definition(s) and research area and future research directions. This report would combine the most important issues with relevance for the future that will be identified in the seminar, and potentially will be published in a magazine or journal.

This seminar will be co-sponsored by EMANICS, the European Network of Excellence for the Management of Internet Technologies and Complex Services.