5G network infrastructures and embodied technologies are destined to “become a stakeholder driven, holistic environment for technical and business innovation integrating networking, computing and storage resources into one programmable and unified infrastructure”. It is this 5G vision that when it is further projected to accommodate verticals, it raises several technical issues.  Motivated by them, the Horizon 2020 5GINFIRE project aspires to address two interlinked questions:

- Q1: How such a holistic and unified environment should look like?

- Q2: How can 5GINFIRE host and integrate verticals and concurrently deal with reconciling their competing and opposing requirements?

Expected impacts of the project are:

(1)    Exploit and extend SDN and NFV principles, as well as applying emerging SFC concepts in a homogeneous manner

(2)    Provide a reference ecosystem of FIRE facilities and beyond

(3)    Continue, harmonise and standardise the successful technological developments in the area of testing from FIRE, in particular as promoting the use of Software Networks (SDN, NFV) and its applications to satisfy 5G requirements

(4)    Bring testing frameworks to the next level, by introducing features that are considered essential by industry.