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IEEE Netsoft 2023 :: 6th Workshop on Advances in Slicing for Softwarized Infrastructures towards 6G (S4SI 2023) The current industry trend of convergence between computing and networking ecosystems highlights that computing, storage, and connectivity services, as well as any other present and future application instances, will be deployed in the form of virtualized assets within software-defined infrastructures. All of these will be managed and made available under the “as a Service” paradigm. This concept is summarized under the idea of a Slice, which has become a central piece in the evolution of telecom networks. Yet the topic of Slicing is very much fragmented across conceptual views, approaches, technologies, standardization, and so on. In its sixth edition, the S4SI workshop aims at bringing consolidation around slicing and discussing advances and challenges related to Slicing in Softwarized Infrastructures towards 6G for faster and improved deployment of services in 5G and beyond environments. Furthermore, there is an increasing need for the realization of a compute continuum from IoT-to-Edge-to-Cloud. In this respect, network slicing will be at the forefront in order to support the deployment and operation of new services and applications across IoT devices, edge/core clouds and initial conception of 6G architectures This entails significant challenges for the unified management and orchestration of resources across different network segments (radio, transport, core) together with edge and cloud infrastructures, potentially owned and managed by different operators. Potential intertwining of network slicing mechanisms with ad-hoc clouds and digital twinning raises further research questions, which will be of particular interest for the workshop. There are clearly many open questions to be addressed, including: * Fragmented landscape and gaps, from concepts to standards towards multi-domain, end-to-end slicing; * How do the existing resource technologies of computing, storage and network can seamlessly be managed, orchestrated and controlled as part of end-to-end slices? * How end-to-end slices can automatically be defined and allocated on-demand – as a service – to host network services with similar requirements in terms of SLA and QoS; * How can cross-slice communication be orchestrated and set up in a secure and optimized manner in order to enable interactions between services deployed in co-located slices? * How to integrate novel approaches that could facilitate the lifecycle management of slices on SDI, like intent-based mechanisms, smart operation based on Artificial Intelligence, etc. * What are the lessons learned from early slicing capabilities deployed for 5G systems, and what are the operational gaps yet open. S4SI aims at providing an international forum for researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, network operators, and service providers to discuss and address the challenges deriving from the emerging scenarios around Slicing where systems, processes, and workflows used in both computing and communications domains are converging. Altogether, S4SI seeks to improve the common understanding of Slicing, the expected benefits, including the new business model opportunities between slice providers and tenants. A concluding panel will contribute with a rich discussion on the lessons learned and the path ahead towards the consolidation of Slicing. The workshop welcomes contributions from both computing and network-oriented research communities, with the aim of facilitating discussion, cross-fertilization and exchange of ideas and practices, and successfully promotes innovative solutions toward a real use of slices. We are interested in papers (6 pages for Full papers, 4 pages for Short papers, excluding 1 page for references) that cover some of the following topics: * Efficient provisioning and operation of Slices * Abstractions models and APIs for a Slice * Intent-based systems facilitating slicing * Architectures for network slicing across the entire * Cross-domain Slicing, federation, interconnection compute continuum * Issues in adapting existing systems for Slicing * Smart scaling and elasticity on E2E slices * Novel control and data planes for slicing * Monitoring and Analytics systems for Slicing * High precision slicing with QoS/KPIs guarantees * Slicing for 6G * Slicing with guarantees for quality, performance, Multi-Domain Management and Orchestration * Effective Integration in software-based control, reliability, scalability, high elasticity, resilience safety and security * Effective slicing integration in network * Service Slicing assurance and fulfilment programmability * Energy-efficiency and green operation in slicing * Cloud and Network Edge-native slicing * Digital twins support of Slicing for cyber * AI/ML-assisted Slicing networking * Self-management and Zero-configuration network slicing * Slicing beyond the 5G Service Based Architecture * 6G Slicing needs * 6G energy enablers * Network and Service Operation and Resource Management in 6G environments * Slicing Intents and Digital twinning applied in 6G Best papers presented will be invited to submit an extended version for fast-track review in selected journals, e.g., IEEE Communications Magazine Series on Telecom Software, Network Virtualization, and Software Defined Networks. New in this 6th edition of S4SI is the additional call for proposals of lightning talks, industry and/or open source pitches targeting short presentations that could focus on specific research tracks, products or services featuring solutions related to slicing. For this kind of proposals a 2-page paper submission is expected for presenting the intended presentation. Important Dates * Paper Submission:March 17, 2023; (Extended) April 2, 2023 * Notification of Acceptance: April 21, 2023 * Camera ready: April 28, 2023 * Workshop date: June 19, 2023 or June 23, 2023 *** Paper Submission *** Authors are invited to submit original contributions (written in English) in PDF format. Only original papers not published or submitted for publication elsewhere will be considered for the workshop. Link to submit papers: https://edas.info/N30701 More information: https://intrig.dca.fee.unicamp.br/s4si2023/