ARE: Action Recommendation Engine for Network Operations Centers (Phase IIb)

该项目的目标是提供现实世界可部署性的证据，并将渥太华大学研究团队发明的技术转让给跨国电信公司Ciena Corp.（以下简称Ciena），该公司在加拿大拥有重要的业务和研发业务。该发明的研究原型被称为行动推荐引擎（ARE），是在2018年10月至2021年6月期间与Ciena合作开发的，该项目耗资287,635.43美元，现已准备就绪并在实验室环境中成功验证。ARE是一个基于人工智能（AI）的系统，它(1)自动检测IP网络中的问题，(2)给出如何解决这些问题的建议，以及(3)给出采取行动的建议，以最大限度地降低网络提供商的成本，同时最大限度地提高用户的体验质量（QoE）。ARE既可以作为推荐者部署，要求人类操作员应用/覆盖推荐的操作，也可以作为完全自主的操作接受者部署，以人类脱离循环的方式部署。ARE的应用主要在网络运营中心（NOC），通过自动化部分或全部NOC的手动操作，ARE可以显著降低运营成本。该项目的目标是针对真实环境对ARE进行微调，并将其集成到一个现实的工具中，如公司的Blue PlanetTM智能自动化产品线，以便在实际的客户环境中验证ARE的设计和实施。在该项目结束时，我们将对ARE技术进行微调，并建立其技术就绪性和实际可部署性的证据，而Ciena将获得将ARE推向市场的技术能力。Ciena独家授权ARE并为其申请了专利。

The goal of this project is to provide evidence of real-world deployability and transfer the technology of an invention by the University of Ottawa's research team to the multinational telecommunications company Ciena Corp. (hereafter Ciena) which has significant business and R&D operations in Canada. The research prototype of the invention, called Action Recommendation Engine (ARE), was developed from October 2018 to June 2021 under a $287,635.43 MITACS Accelerate Cluster research project in partnership with Ciena, and is now ready and successfully verified in a lab setting. ARE is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based system that (1) automatically detects problems in IP networks, (2) gives recommendations on how to fix those problems, and (3) gives recommendations on taking actions to minimize network provider's cost while maximizing users' quality of experience (QoE). ARE can be deployed either as a recommender, requiring a human operator to apply/override the recommended actions, or as a fully autonomous action taker in a human-out-of-the-loop fashion. ARE's applications are mainly in Network Operations Centers (NOC), where ARE can lead to a significant reduction in operation costs by automating some or all of NOC's manual operationsThe objectives of this project are to finetune ARE for a real environment and to integrate it inside a realistic tool such as the company's Blue PlanetTM Intelligent Automation product line in order to validate ARE's design and implementation in a practical customer setting. At the end of this project, we will have finetuned the ARE technology and established evidence of its technical readiness and real-world deployability, while Ciena will have acquired the technical capability to take ARE to the market. Ciena has exclusively licensed ARE and has also patented it.