= A Serial Introduction Part 2 =Winners of ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards 2020
In May every year, The ITU Association of Japan (ITU-AJ) proudly presents ITU-AJ Encouragement Awards to people who have madeoutstanding contributions in the field of international standardization and have helped in the ongoing development of ICT.
These Awards are also an embodiment of our sincere desire to encourage further contributions from these individuals in the future.
If you happen to run into these winners at another meeting in the future, please say hello to them.
But first, as part of the introductory series of Award Winners, allow us to introduce some of those remarkable winners.

Morihiro Sakakibara

International Cooperation Department, KDDI FOUNDATION
http://www.kddi-foundation.or.jp/english/
Fields of activity: ICT Projects in Education

International Cooperation to Improve University Education
in Myanmar
It is a great honor to be recognized with this ITU Association ofJapan Encouragement Award. I would like to offer sincere thanks to
the ITU-AJ and all those involved.
From FY2014 into FY2017, through a special contribution fromthe Japanese Government and multiple Asia-Pacific Telecommunity(APT) pilot projects operated in Myanmar to eliminate the digital
divide, education and research cloud servers were installed at theUniversity of Information Technology (UIT) in Yangon and acloud network was built, which several IT universities could use
through Internet VPN networks. As a result of participating in theseprojects, and even after they finished, I have been working withgovernment and university-related people in Myanmar to promote
the following three main policies, to expand cloud networks and build
environments to promote their use.
The first was to add four more cloud servers, distributing theHiroshi Dempoload among the major computer and technological universities,
compensating for increasing load as more universities use them inthe future. The second was to hold workshops in collaboration withAPNIC (the organization managing IP addresses in the Asia-Pacificregion) starting in FY2018, to improve networking technology
used by university professors. The third was to give students anopportunity to improve their programming and development,planning and English presentation skills, and to hold application
contests starting in FY2017 for all 46 universities under theEducation Ministry that have IT-related faculties.
I learned many things through frequent visits to the area, asking
about their needs, seeing, hearing, contacting, and understanding
again and again. The process of solving such problems takes timeand effort, but the joy of accomplishing them is very special. I hope tocontinue working with the people there in the future.

NEC Corporation

https://www.nec.com/
Fields of activity: Network Function Virtualization

Contributions to NFV Standardization Activities
It is my great pleasure to receive this Encouragement Award
from the ITU Association of Japan. I believe that it is a result of
collaborative effort with people involved and I would like to offer mysincere thanks to them.
ETSI-NFV was established in 2012 to standardize virtualisationof network functions, and is a place where many technicalorganizations share their experiences. The NFV architecture
designed at the birth of the community has frequently been referenced
by many standardization organizations, and NFV deploymentscompliant with the standards can also be seen in service providers’production environments. It has been a valuable experience to beinvolved with the innovation process, from recognizing new technicalvalue to popularizing them in the market.
My main achievements can be seen in the area of network
infrastructure. I contributed to technical documents describing acollection of use cases and architecture, in which multiple NFVenvironments are interconnected over wide area networks. I also
contributed to Interoperability test reports in ETSI-NFV and OpticalInternetworking Forum, providing verification of interactions
between NFV and network infrastructure based on Transport SDN
API specifications. These experiences led me to further recognizethat devices from different vendors can be managed without vendorspecific knowledge, which clearly highlights awareness of thesignificance of technical standards. Moving on with my involvements
I became newly motivated to work on data modeling for NFVresources as an ETSI-NFV rapporteur. The achievements have beenreflected in a specification on the ETSI-NFV portal.
Encouraged by this award from the ITU Association of Japan,
I hope to continue contributing to 5G/ 6G technologies and thecomputers and communications industry.

New Breeze Summer 2021

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