The openness of NEXOF is key to deliver the interoperability feature without which the NESSI strategy will fail. The coordination of NESSI is key to ensure that different strands of research come together as an integrated approach into NEXOF.
Achieving the right balance between openness and coordination is a challenge, and NESSI is working through its Working Groups and SRA Committee to move forward and delivers NEXOF.

 In that sense, NEXOF is the platform delivered by NESSI in full alignment with the role of an ETP

• to bring coherence accross a large strategic area of the economy
• to foster innovation through state of the art advances that are researched with NEXOF as a starting point and an integration environment
• to maintain this coherence through future evolutions and incorporate innovations as they appear

This coordinated approach to ensure coherence and innovation is also reflected in NESSI’s structured proposals that will be submitted to the 1st call of FP7.

NESSI partners and members are currently identifying the relevant instruments to implement the NESSI SRA and its NEXOF foundation.  As detailed below, NESSI has structured its research into three categories of projects, and the open call for FP7 research projects constitutes one of the vehicles towards the realisation of NESSI.

NESSI research projects are structured as:

• NESSI Strategic Projects (NSP), which address a set of immediate research questions cross-cutting several areas of the NESSI holistic model. They are designed to become core contributors to NEXOF, each of them ensuring an extensive coverage of a research area as identified in the NESSI SRA documents. These projects in addition to their contribution will validate the applicability of NESSI principles in one or more application domains. Due to their very nature, these projects incorporate an integration effort and are designed as much as possible to decrease risks, even if advancing state of the art is important. Strategic Projects are the pillars contributing to the overall coherence of NESSI.
• NESSI Projects (NP), which typically concentrate on focused research topics and are designed to have a strong coherence with the NESSI Open Framework  They are also contributors to NEXOF and are designed with a higher innovative content and therefore risk. Paradigm shifts, totally new approaches in a specific area etc will typically be analysed and researched in these NESSI Projects.
• NESSI Compliant Projects (NCtP), which are research projects aligned with the NESSI SRA. While these projects may contribute to NEXOF, their main purpose is to open up NESSI to all ICT stakeholders, both NESSI members and non members. They are a tool towards further opening up the NESSI community and providing any interested party with an opportunity to adapt their research interest to the NEXOF interoperable approach.

Through this structured approach, NESSI’s balanced organisation ensures that

• NESSI promotes a coherent strategy for the implementation of its Strategic Research Agenda.
• NESSI provides an open approach, fostering active contributions and involving as many ICT stakeholders and users as possible.

This approach is a continuation of NESSI's achievements during 2006, a year in which the ETP set up an organisation of members who were given the opportunity to select working groups and participate to NESSI in the domains most relevant to their fields of activity. The totally open approach to memberships further reinforced the aims of NESSI to reach out to all players.