DEINE SUCHERGEBNISSE.

(picture: 5G Radio Unit, 5G-Lab Weiterstadt) Together with our parent company Logicalis GmbH, we are building a new private 5G campus network in the Technologiepark Adlershof which will be up and running by Christmas this year. The advantage compared to a public network: fewer users share the available bandwidth, making it more secure and stable and new innovative ideas and business models can be tested under clear conditions. In addition, a "5G showroom" will be created in 2022 as an innovation center. Interested parties can experience the new 5G technology live on site and develop and test their own use cases. WISTA Management GmbH will provide a basic version of the network free of charge, while Logicalis GmbH and our specialists at siticom will be responsible for customer-specific adaptations, integration and operation. Roland Sillmann, Managing Director of WISTA Management GmbH: "Our task is to provide the companies in the Adlershof Science and Technology Park with the framework conditions for their economic growth. This also includes looking at: What will the companies need in a few years? 5G will bring a boost, and that's why it's so important that we offer an environment to test and develop them further to companies already working on their 5G applications." But WISTA also wants to show ideas for companies that have not had a role in 5G yet, so they have the opportunity to learn more and try it out. "5G technology will enable applications that we don't even know about today," Sillmann said. "But most importantly, 5G will rapidly advance the Internet of Things, driving Industry 4.0." In our Insight "Innovation platform 5G" you will find our use cases and solutions around private 5G. You can get a quick overview of our services in the Campus Networks section. Thanks to Technologiepark Adlershof for their story "schnell, schneller, Adlershof" about our exclusive 5G Campus Network!

Open source is changing the world – one contribution at a time.​ Welcome to siticom Hacktoberfest! This year we are participating in a series of presentations and discussions about your experiences with open source projects. Your host will be Marius Gerling (marius.gerling@siticom.de). When? 14th October 2021, 2:00 pm – open end Where? siticom Office Weiterstadt Brunnenweg 19 - 64331 Weiterstadt 3rd floor Furthermore, it is also possible to participate remotely via Microsoft Teams, but only in the presentations. The hackathon and the networking will take place on site. All siticom and logicalis enthusiasts are welcome to attend! If you want to participate in this event, please click on the following link to register: Agenda From 2 p.m.: Internal get togehter 5 p.m.: Open for guests 6 p.m.: Presentations & Yum-Yum (weather-proofed – promised) 5G /OpenRAN Openstack / Deployment Automation Open Source GIS Projects Terraform Provider development „Open End“: Hacking and networking About Hacktoberfest Hacktoberfest, now in its eighth consecutive year, is a month-long open source software event. This October, DigitalOcean invites you to join open source software enthusiasts, beginners and the developer community in contributing to open source projects. Find here for the current Hacktoberfest calendar.

Logicalis was ranked as a leader in the "Technology and Service Suppliers (core - 4G/5G)" category in an ISG Provider Lens™ study, conducted by leading international market research and consulting firm ISG. The providers classified as leaders have an extremely attractive product and service offering as well as a clearly strong market and competitive position and thus meet all the requirements for effective market development. They are regarded as strategic leaders in the competitive market. About the study The ISG Provider Lens™ study "Networks - Software Defined Solutions and Services" examines different providers of SDN (Software Defined Networking) core services in order to position them with their competitors on the market according to various criteria. The underlying criteria also include, for example, solutions and services from the areas of SD-WASN, Edge and 5G. The aim of the study is to support the decision-making process of companies in selecting the appropriate provider. About SDx By integrating this technology and a customized solution approach, companies can be helped to develop and implement their strategies to improve their performance over the SD network. This enables them to increase their level of agility and transform outdated network architectures. This software-based technology goes hand in hand with a growing cloudification of services and supports companies especially in the realization of large-scale projects. Due to these facts and the massive reduction of costs and complexity, more and more companies are convinced of this networking approach. Logicalis Expertise Logicalis offers a wide range of Software-Defined solutions and services, with offerings ranging from initial consulting to full or partial solution implementation. In this area, Logicalis demonstrates a high level of maturity with successful use cases, integrated designs and implementation services. Through effective collaboration and shared expertise with diverse partners, Logicalis has been able to position itself in a strong market and competitive position, proving its strengths in a thriving SDN market. According to ISG analysts, in the growing SDN market, Logicalis' close collaboration with its customers will sustain enterprise agility. "We are proud that ISG recognizes our strategy and investments behind it by ranking us as a Leader in the SDx environment. This also underpins our strengths in the growing SDN market," said Andreas Richter, Head of Marketing and Communications Europe at Logicalis. siticom & Logicalis With the acquisition of siticom GmbH 2021, Logicalis is able to expand its expertise in Software Defined Services. siticom is a leading provider for communication networks and campus network solutions in the market for SDN and 5G. In addition, the acquisition enables Logicalis to establish an EMEA center of excellence for forward-looking 5G networks to further develop the interoperability of cloud-orchestrated networks. The gain in competence in Next Generation Networks will also enable Logicalis to expand its service portfolio in this segment and grow further in the area of Professional Services and Managed Services (press release). About ISG ISG (Information Services Group) (Nasdaq: III) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 700 clients, including more than 75 of world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; strategy and operations design; change man-agement; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs more than 1,300 digital-ready professionals operating in more than 20 countries—a global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and tech-nology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry’s most comprehensive marketplace data. For more information, visit: Leading Global Technology Research & Advisory Firm | ISG (isg-one.com). About siticom siticom GmbH is an innovative technology company that has been in existence since 2010 and focuses on the digital transformation of infrastructures and the networks of tomorrow. The siticom portfolio is geared towards the complex technological challenges of the future. The solutions and services range from technical and strategic consulting to engineering services for the planning and implementation of network infrastructures in communication and enterprise networks. Thanks to a highly innovative, flexible network of system partners, siticom is able to implement high-quality solutions at short notice. The combination of consulting, design and architecture, bundled with the assumption of system and implementation responsibility as well as test automation, distinguishes siticom as an independent system integrator: 5G Campus Networks | SITICOM.

FMBE GmbH is a specialist in the planning and implementation of sophisticated telecommunications networks. For a leading German research institute, FMBE and its partner siticom are realizing a self-sufficient 5G stand-alone campus solution for a 5G testbed in Bavaria. In this realistic mobile network environment, companies will in future be able to simulate and evaluate their industrial applications for the new 5G mobile radio standard. To this end, FMBE and siticom are pooling their competencies to provide an open 5G stand-alone campus solution with native cloud technologies. FMBE planned and implemented the HF network in the licensed 3.7 GHz range for private 5G indoor and outdoor applications, including the installation and integration of the radio units. In order to ensure the network quality required for future Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications, the HF network design was software-supported, including level planning, calculation of the HF supply quality and simulation of the propagation simulation in 2D and 3D. “Industry 4.0 applications, especially in the area of mobile machine-to-machine communication, result in significantly more demanding requirements for the RF network design than is the case with conventional voice and data communication via LTE cellular or WLAN networks . When mobile network participants, such as autonomous drones or mobile robots, move in a smart factory, one is confronted with signal effects such as reflections, diffraction, refraction or scattering on machines, shadowing and higher attenuation behavior in this frequency range. A high-availability HF network design is critical in order to ensure adequate supply quality at every location, i.e. in the case of a drone also outdoors at a height of several meters. This can only be ensured through software-supported planning and complex propagation simulations in 2D and 3D, ” explains Olaf Kämmer, RF planner and expert for 5G campus networks at FMBE. Together with siticom, which provides an edge computing platform with maximum flexibility with a cloud native 5G core system architecture and multi-access edge computing infrastructure, the partner companies created an open system and network architecture that meets the requirements for testing a wide variety of industrial Withstands Internet of Things (IIoT) applications in practice. "The experience of FMBE in the planning and construction of radio network components complements our expertise in the areas of software-based and virtualized infrastructure solutions, which form the basis of modern 5G architecture," explains Christian Freund, Director 5G Solution & Services at siticom. "Thanks to the partnership with siticom, we are ideally positioned to equip a wide variety of customers, for example from research, industry, transport and administration, with the necessary flexible network and system infrastructure for their specific 5G use cases," confirms Rolf Ernst, Managing Director of FMBE . About the FMBE FMBE GmbH (Fixed & Mobile Broadband Engineering) is a medium-sized telecommunications service provider with around 50 employees at two locations in Rastatt and Groß-Gerau. Together with our customers and partners, we plan and implement the networks of the future. Our service portfolio ranges from the supply of modern office complexes and campus networks with 5G, LTE, Tetra-BOS and WLAN to the planning and implementation of fiber optic broadband networks. In addition to classic mobile and landline network operators, our customers also include banks, industrial, trading and transport companies. Further information can be found at: www.netzederzukunft.de

Our series around DLTs continues. Under the following link "A first step to tamper-proof documents based on Distributed Ledger Technologies" you will find further insights and a "hands-on" example with the help of the ITOA Tangle. Have lots of fun with it!

siticom partners with the Irish company Druid, a world´s leader in Private 5G & 4G solutions We are pleased to announce siticom GmbH's collaboration with Druid, enabling the integration of the market-leading Raemis™ 5G SA core solution. With our joint expertise, we are realizing the digital transformation of enterprise communication networks and can announce the launch of the first private 5G campus network in Germany 2021. Since the German Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA) awarded dedicated 5G spectrum licenses to the industry, which can be used to build locally managed, reliable, secure and highly scalable private networks, 5G technology is booming in the enterprise market. With our combined expertise, we are currently supporting the Technical University of Deggendorf in the modernization and implementation of wireless networks in the field of 5G mobile technology. Among other things, a 5G campus network is to be set up at the Freyung Technology Campus in order to implement research projects in the field of 5G and to be able to carry out product tests. Together, we are enabling the establishment of an innovation platform in the form of an industrial research project in the overall research project in the area of "Ameisenbühl" in Waiblingen, in which the development and research of autonomous, emission-free driven vehicles (class M2/small bus) for passenger transport is carried out with the integration of innovative transport infrastructure concepts and their integration into the operational sequence of local public transport in inner-city areas, taking into account special groups of people and with an evaluation of the economic efficiency of automated public transport from the point of view of traffic econometric evaluations. Data will be collected live or in real-time like from stationary and/or moving vehicles and stored on secured servers. For this purpose, an infrastructure in a dedicated 5G cellular network is preferred, complemented by the connection/supplementation of consumer WLAN technology (Wi-Fi 6 - 802.11ax) for pathways. Druid’s cellular solutions for business are built on its Raemis™ technology platform. Raemis™ is a set of cellular software assets originally crafted by Druid’s engineers and optimised for business use cases. The Raemis™ platform harnesses 5G, 4G, 3G, 2G and Wifi radios from any vendor to implement standalone cellular core network solutions. It also integrates with mobile network operators using standard interfaces giving access to all of the radio resources of these operators. Christian Freund, Expert Director of 5G Solutions at siticom, said: "Private 5G networks enable enterprises to modernize and upgrade so they can finally deploy their own high-performance wireless networks." "We are pleased to announce the signing of our latest partner agreement with siticom in Germany. Druid and siticom are ideally positioned to guide enterprises through the complexities of implementing 5G networks," - Tadhg Kenny, SVP of strategic partnerships at Druid. This partnership draws on a broad range of expertise to enable enterprises to digitally transform their communications networks while navigating them through the complexities of implementing 5G networks. About Druid Druid Software is a core cellular network software company based in Ireland. Druid has evolved into one of the world’s leaders in Private 5G & 4G Cellular technology over the last 20 years. Druids RAEMISTM platform is a mature 3GPP compliant 4G/5G core network, with unique features designed specifically for business and mission critical use. Druid’s mature RAEMISTM platform is in use today by ISPs and Enterprises for mission critical environments in the U.S, Asia and Europe. Druid technology enables solutions in different areas including enterprise communications, IoT, mobile edge computing, and public safety. For more information, please visit https://www.druidsoftware.com. About siticom siticom GmbH is an innovative technology company that has existed since 2010 with a focus on the digital transformation of infrastructures and the networks of tomorrow. siticom's portfolio is geared towards the complex technological challenges of the future. The solutions and services range from technical and strategic advice to engineering services for the planning and implementation of network infrastructures in communication and corporate networks. Thanks to a highly innovative, flexible network of system partners, siticom is able to implement high-quality solutions at short notice. The combination of consulting, design and architecture bundled with the assumption of system and implementation responsibility as well as test automation distinguishes siticom as an independent system integrator. For more information: https://en.siticom.online/.

Large companies e.g. ISPs (Internet-Access-Provider) or Financial Institutes offer many services based on classically developed software which was originally designed for e.g., mainframes and has recently been ported onto virtualized systems, such as vSphere, running on x86 based platforms. This common methodology allows cost-efficient renewal and higher scalability of legacy software systems. A caveat of course is the still rather slow ability to add new features and services due to complex and clumsy development, testing and rollout processes compared to modern, lean and cost-efficient CI/CD based service offerings. What is CI / CD? It is a method that regularly delivers applications and services to customers and automates all phases of application development. The main concepts of CI/CD are Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment. It simplifies code deployment and code integration for DevOps teams fundamentally. In particular, CI/CD ensures continuous automation and monitoring over the entire lifecycle, from the integration and test to the provision and implementation phase. These interrelated practices are often referred to as the “CI/CD pipeline,” and they are supported by agile collaboration among DevOps teams. Common assumptions as reason behind reluctance Although ISPs would wish to leverage from those benefits of a disruptive continuous integration and continuous delivery and canary deployment, they shy away from the risk trying to organically migrate to a next step of modernization and optimization. Not only reluctant because of the potential financial risk, but even more restrained concerning necessary culture change and lacking skill levels in their organizations. There is a certain mindset, that CI/CD must be introduced at once, basically in a disruptive manner and it cannot be smoothly integrated in running systems. Therefore, many customers assume CI/CD can only be applied with new green field approaches and legacy systems should remain untouched until they need replacement due to excessively high operational costs. We made the experience that this assumption is not necessarily right. A smooth migration of legacy solutions to CI/CD can be achieved step by step, starting with a small number of applications and adapting more of them going forward. This procedure provides enough time to prepare for the necessary organizational changes and processes and allows to keep maximum control on the migration process going baby steps from one proof point to the next, to finally reach a 100% migration to CI/CD. The challenge to resolve For a successful introduction of CI/CD into a legacy-based environment, it is indispensable to clearly define the specific project goals (Milestones and MVPs), their success- and exit-criteria. What means MVP “Minimum Viable Product”? Many projects fail because of the wrong assumption that the entire product can be understood and developed at once. A far better way can be to develop instead of one full and inclusive product, step by step small, but functioning products – so called Minimum Viable Products. The customer is free to decide and even has the chance to change his mind and perception during the process in order to be able to get the best he can. An example is shown in the picture: Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P7nCmln7PM&t=15s with additional reference to Making sense of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) – and why I prefer Earliest Testable/Usable/Lovable Posted on 2016-01-25 by Henrik Kniberg The customer’s basic requirement might be: „I want to get faster from A to B”. The team develops a first MVP (Minimum Viable Product) e.g., a “skateboard”, which is tested by the customer. His feedback “OK, but I might need something to hold on” formulates more precise requirements which again will result in the MVP of the next step. The process goes on and on and terminates whenever the customer is satisfied with the product. The benefit of this approach is that the customer is contented with the final product – that he kind of co-developed – and the development risk is reduced, because only a minimal effort is spent in each step. The following video summarizes the model of Henrik Kniberg: Link What else is needed to be successful? In order to avoid misunderstandings a clear-cut policy is required, that describes what needs to be changed, where this happens, how it will be worked out and who is in charge. It is also important to avoid unnecessary complexity, any proprietary approach or the use of sophisticated functionality of a specific tool which might lead to a lock in situation for a specific tool and jeopardizes the openness and flexibility of the solution. Simple, common procedures and open concepts are key. Decide for elements which are proven and common sense in the competitive environment and avoid niche solutions for early adopters. For CI/CD commonly used tools and frameworks have been successfully utilized in different environments e.g., automotive, social media. These tools and frameworks can also be applied in the ISP segment. As a conceptual basis it makes a lot of sense to define the CI/CD architecture in a way to be flexible for future adaptations. Some customers do not wish to deploy their artefacts and applications as microservices in docker based environments in the first place and rather remain with VMware. The rather decide for a stepwise approach utilizing tools for deployment or orchestration going forward. An example CI/CD Toolchain for legacy enterprise environment. The figure describes a typical CI/CD concept who still run their applications developed as RPMs on a Linux environment based on VM. The architecture basically utilizes the tools Jfrog Artifactory, Gitlab and Ansible Tower, which are installed to serve for several independent locations from left to right starting with development, test and acceptance and finally production. What RPM stands for? RPM Package Manager (RPM) (originally Red Hat Package Manager, now a recursive acronym) is a free and open-source package management system. The name RPM refers to .rpm file format and the package manager program itself. RPM was intended primarily for Linux distributions. Most RPM files are “binary RPMs” (or BRPMs) containing the compiled version of some software e.g., of an application. There are also “source RPMs” (or SRPMs) containing the source code used to build a binary package. What are the tools used for? Artifactory takes care of the actual artefact, namely RPMs building specific applications. It also handles the necessary OS prerequisites i.e., patch sets, or security settings organized as golden and base images. The specific configurations of the environment which allow the application to communicate with others are stored in Gitlab. Both repositories are bundled and sealed as so-called release bundles. Once available in a specific location the according Ansible Tower takes care of the deployment of the application on the intended VM. Throughout the process of CI/CD the release bundle in the repositories of Artifactory and Gitlab are staged from left to the right, to finally arrive in the production environment. Typically, each environment is in a different geographic location and as well in a strictly separated IP network. The IP interconnection is established using security proxies. The release bundles themselves are encrypted and strongly tied together, sealed, on their way through the CI/CD toolchain. This guarantees that any potential manipulation of the release bundle throughout the CI/CD process is identified and will not cause any harm. Whereas artifacts, base and golden images, e.g., including more security patches, vary quite a lot during the early development process there is no further change to them in the other environments. Only the config data differs slightly as it takes respect of the different hostnames, IP addresses or configurative differences in the specific environments. In the development or testing environment there might be software simulators connected to the specific application, whereas in the acceptance area and specifically in the production area the application will cooperate with real counterparts. Thus, the quality of the delivered artifacts increases throughout the CI/CD process from left to the right. The described solution is very open and flexible, and it can even be applied whenever the service provider wishes to develop applications as microservices on a docker basis and to deploy them more elegant through an orchestration, e.g., Kubernetes. In this case Artifactory and Gitlab stay in place and Ansible Tower would be replaced by Kubernetes and / or Open shift. The outlined concept can be completed with a couple of other tools, Keycloak for SSO and Hashicorp Vault to handle credential management and certificates.

New challenges for broadband providers Large broadband providers are increasingly relying on software-based solutions for their access networks: The systems previously purchased from external service providers are to be replaced by open, disaggregated, and highly automated systems. This enables more cost-efficient and more scalable platforms which, in particular, are more flexible to operate and maintain. Current approaches and technologies are used for this, such as microservices in Docker containers, Kubernetes, "Continuous Integration" and "Continuous Deployment" (CICD). The conversion of the broadband infrastructure to a software-based approach requires the extensive involvement of agile teams with expertise in both software development and DevOps as well as in the area of ​​network infrastructure. siticom supports! We support the test automation, release management and quality assurance (QA) areas of one of these innovative transformation projects: Our teams in the project combine many years of experience in the management of software projects with practical developer expertise in DevOps and networks. In this post, we take a closer look at the work of our QA team. Our focus: Ensuring code quality Code is the crucial artefact of every project in the field of software-defined networking (SDN). The developer teams involved usually bring their own respective quality standards for code with them. In order to ensure smooth cooperation within the project, it is necessary to unify these standards and, in particular, to adapt them to the existing conditions. For example, a broadband provider specifies the infrastructure and processes for the roll-out of new network infrastructure - requirements of this kind must be uniformly taken into account by all teams at an early stage of development. Our QA team works across teams: The team analyzes the customer's quality requirements and works with the developer teams to decide on rules and processes for their uniform implementation and monitoring. For this purpose, the team is in constant contact with the code maintainers of the individual teams and system testers as well as with the project management. Concrete activities of our QA teams: Quality agreements for tools and frameworks In cooperation with the developer and infrastructure teams within the project, we draft and sharpen quality agreements for code in the programming languages ​​used in the project (e.g. Go and Java), as well as for tools used (e.g. Docker and Kubernetes) and for development processes (GitFlow, processing of merge requests (MRs), test processes). The agreements include, for example: > policies for the structure and formatting of the code > policies for using libraries > policies for logging system-internal processes > name conventions for branches > policies for merge requests in GitLab > policies for allowed Docker Base Images We take particular care to integrate agreements that have already been established in the individual project teams, and accompany their standardization and visible documentation. Static code analysis (SCA) In particular, our quality agreements also contain rules for the use of tools for static code analysis (linting, SAST, etc.) in the CI pipeline, so that potential violations of the quality agreements can be found and remedied directly by developers during a commit. To extend and standardize the tools used in the project so far, we are working on the project-wide provision of SonarQube (https: / /www.sonarqube.org/). SonarQube offers static code analysis for many different languages ​​on a uniform platform and clearly visualizes the analysis results. This makes it easier to evaluate the overall code quality for everyone involved in the project, from the developer to the product owner. We plan to connect SonarQube to the GitLab instance used in the project, so that merge requests in GitLab are automatically decorated with the results of SonarQube analyses. This allows both developers and reviewers to quickly see which potential problems exist in new code and which have already been fixed. The particular challenge when introducing SonarQube is to adapt the analysis rules used in SonarQube to project-specific requirements and, if necessary, to expand them appropriately. We design and iterate these adjustments in collaboration with the project teams. Evaluate and support development activities automatically In a large development project, many different teams have to coordinate their work with one another, for example the APIs of the individual microservices must be compatible with each other. At the same time, new versions of individual microservices are created at short intervals. We help to coordinate these processes in a meaningful way by adding automatic scripts to the tools available in GitLab. For example, our scripts create a "GitLab weather report" that summarizes the project-relevant activities in GitLab for all project members (e.g. status of new release branches in relevant repositories). Additional scripts automatically create the base for release notes, check the compatibility of the microservices with one another by comparing the versions of the information model used, and analyze the dependencies used. Regular quality review In cooperation with the developer and infrastructure teams within the project, we draft and sharpen quality agreements for code in the programming languages ​​used in the project (e.g. Go and Java), as well as for tools used (e.g. Docker and Kubernetes) and for development processes (GitFlow, processing of merge requests (MRs), test processes). The agreements include, for example:ment the results of the reviews as "technical debt" which, depending on the severity, must be removed for a current or future release. Contact partners Project Sylvia Grewe Consultant +49 151 624 163 90 sylvia.grewe@siticom.de Marketing & Partnership Ben Sellwood Director HR & Communications + 49 151 155 240 69 ben.sellwood@siticom.de

Pressrelease London, 2nd June 2021: Logicalis, a leading international IT solutions and managed services provider, today announces the acquisition of the network transformation and modernisation specialist, siticom. The investment strengthens Logicalis’ capability to deliver software-defined services to customers as they look to connect people and devices. siticom established its business in 2010 and is a leading player in the software-defined networking (SDN) and 5G market as an expert in communication networks and campus network solutions. With a team of 130 experts across five German locations, siticom develops complex networking solutions for its customers, including some of the world’s largest telecoms service providers, financial data providers and chemical plant infrastructure operators. The acquisition of siticom empowers Logicalis to establish a pan-EMEA centre-of-expertise in advanced 5G network capabilities to evolve Cloud orchestrated network interoperability. siticom’s proficiency in next generation networks enhances the Logicalis services portfolio as it continues to grow in the professional and managed services space. Bob Bailkoski, Logicalis CEO comments: “Modern network infrastructures are the foundation of every digital business. The strategic decision to acquire siticom is driven by the growing demand for broadband services and fibre optics expansion as we continue to deliver speed, scale and agility for global customers. As a Cisco Global Gold Partner, we are already developing SD-WAN solutions and together with siticom we can build on our partnership to create end-to-end 5G offerings for the business of the future.” Jürgen Hatzipantelis, Co-Managing Director at siticom adds: “Our advanced networking expertise combined with Logicalis’ global reach opens up new markets for both businesses. As a global Managed Services Provider (MSP), Logicalis will assist with growing siticom and building the institutional foundations required to scale the business while preserving our culture of openness and innovation.” Stefan Höltken, Co-Managing Director at siticom concludes: “By combining our knowledge in SDN, 5G and infrastructure services with Logicalis’ managed services offering and strong customer relations, siticom is now able to provide a more holistic offering to its customers.” siticom has extensive skills in telecommunication and software-defined network architectures, enabling Industrial IoT implementations, and next-generation public and private networks. The 5G solutions specialist is a member of Bitkom, Germany’s largest digital association. siticom’s deep knowledge combined with its strong strategic partnerships with leading 5G providers including Nokia, Airspan, Metaswitch and Druid Software will accelerate Logicalis’ vision to be a leader in digital transformation and expands its solutions and services for customers around the globe. For more informations follow Logicalis & siticom Press contact siticom GmbH Ben Sellwood Brunnenweg 19 64331 Weiterstadt/Germany Phone: +49 151 15524069 Mail: ben.sellwood@siticom.de Web: www.siticom.online

We are excited to announce our Advanced Partnership in the area of IT automation and management with Red Hat again!🎉 Automation is one of the key drivers for digital transformation. Modern environments shall be able to automatically scale at any time, but at the same time the security and stability of all systems need to be guaranteed around the clock. In summary, the automation challenges can be divided into the following areas, with which we are glad to assist you: Deployment Your business applications require infrastructure, regardless of whether it is bare metal or in a private, hybrid or public cloud environment. Are you still working with templates? Then you already have a great advantage. Now these templates have to be automated. Configuration management Applications have different requirements, for example: settings of file systems, ports and users. We provide you a robust configuration management solution with which the infrastructure (bare metal, virtualization, cloud, container, etc.) can be defined in a simple way so that all teammembers can work with. Orchestration Most likely, you have more than one application. This inevitably results in management and maintenance challenges in various data centers and infrastructures. Of course, also taking into account public, private and hybrid cloud environments. This results in the combination of different automated tasks and their configurations across system groups. Deployment of applications Whether you choose a traditional approach of application development or use an ongoing integration and deployment (CI/CD), successful application development depends on robust, automated systems, from commit to build, testing over to deployment. Security and Compliance We are happy to help you implement the automation of your security, compliance and risk management guidelines by installing them into your entire infrastructure as automated steps. Standardized security processes and workflows facilitate compliance aspects and audits. Red Hat Ansible® Automation Red Hat® OpenShift® Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® Click here to visit the Red Hat partner info page about siticom: https://redhat.secure.force.com/finder/PFPartnerDetail?id=001f200001TKd4CAAT

Based on the last Insight, DLTs - Networked Computers Come To An Agreement we received a lot of positive feedback, but also questions. We want to answer some of them within this blog post. TOKENIZATION AS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF DIGITALIZATION CORE FUNCTIONALITY OF A DLT BYZANTIN GENERALS PROBLEM – CONSENS PROOF OF STAKE PROOF OF WORK These elements will be part of our use case „Using DLTs for tamperproof documents“ within our series about DLTs. We let you know as soon if the Insight is available. This article is available in German as well. See here https://www.siticom.online/post/konsens-im-dlt TOKENIZATION AS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF DIGITALIZATION Tokenization as a next important step for digital assets got the potential to change the global finance markets. Token: Digitalized assets based on a distributed ledgers are named token. A token can have a specific function or value, which enables various use cases. Tokenization: It is about the digital copy of a value or an asset including the according rights and responsibilities, as well the possibility to transfer the ownership. Tokenizing „real world assets“ enable to digitize and to integrate them easy, tamperproof and cost efficient within digital processes. Real world assets connected directly to the digital world will unfold unused potentials. CORE FUNCTIONALITY OF A DLT What is the core functionality of a DLT? DLTs store information tamper-proof and reliable. It is important to understand that the technological implementation of this main task can take place in different ways. However, it doesn’t change the users experiences in working with the DLT. A first possible approach is the implementation as known from the Bitcoin network, as a so called Blockchain. A second possible approach is the implementation as a Directed Acyclic Graph. Both variants have similar challenges, storing information tamper-proof and unchangeable. Compared to a typical centralized application like PayPal, DLT’s act decentralized. This approach promises higher security aspects as we know it from typical centralized applications today. Why is this approach more secure? Let us draw a simple everyday scenario. Imagine you transmit your yearly energy-consumption digitally to he website of your local energy provider. Imagine your provider is attacked by a ransomware (as it happens too often nowadays). How can you proof the authenticity of your submitted data? In a centralized environment: You can’t proof your data or be certain, that the system isn’t corrupted. Within a decentralized system: 51% of the distributed active nodes would need to provide a wrong value to declare this as valid. Compared to a centralized system attacking a decentralized network is by far more complex and difficult to accomplish. Decentralized systems have their own challenges though. How can you proof that a participant tells the truth in a decentralized network without a single entity which controls the network? BYZANTIN GENERALS PROBLEM - CONSENSUS Finding consensus within a dynamic environment isn’t easy for humans nor machines. It requires decisions to find consensus, for example “yes” or “no”, “valid” or “not valid” or to decide for an opinion if there are multiple options. And if you think about the decision process, it’s always a matter of trust. Which opinion to trust? Who says the truth? Which participant is the right one to ask? A summary of one of the dilemmas, you can find within this YouTube video. Those who don’t like videos can go directly to the following chapter, where we wrote a summary for you. Source https://youtu.be/LoGx_ldRBU0 Let’s have a look at the issue itself, first. If we assume, that we have a flat and equal network where all nodes have the same information and get all the same new information. If this is the case, we have no issues. If everybody plays the game according to the rules, there’s no problem. To be a fully decentralized network, it is important all nodes are equal, and the network is flat. If this isn’t the case and one node have a predefined higher weight than the others by delegation, this is not decentralized anymore. But what will happen within a fully decentralized network, if one node has different information? First, it must be sure, the information is valid and follows the rules of the network. If this is true, the information must be shared within the network and the network must accept the information as true as well. If one node tries to cheat by sending different information to various nodes for example, how can this be controlled, how to trust the information within the network? First, the nodes must talk to each other and must ask the other nodes for their opinion or better said received information. If the nodes within the network talk to each other, they will find the node which is sending different information to the nodes easily. If the nodes realize now that one node sent different information to the others, they can identify this node and ignore it finding the correct answer. This can be done until only three participants are left within a consensus process. And now if there is one malicious node left within the three, we reach a tie situation. At the end if there’s a tie situation, a predefined solution will be chosen, and the information will be dropped as invalid which keeps the data structure clean. As a conclusion you can say, if you control 51% of a decentralized network, you can control the network. But this is more difficult than taking over just one centralized unit. How to avoid someone take over 51% of the network? There are many approaches to avoid someone taking over the network and further methods are still under development. Two of the most common methods we will explain today. PROOF OF STAKE One variant of finding a secure consensus is the so called “Proof of Stake” (PoS). A random mechanism decides which nodes are allowed to produce the next block and decide which transactions are included. The new block will be verified from randomly chosen and trustworthy nodes. To get a trustworthy node within a PoS network, a predefined amount of token needs to be stored for each node. Additionally, a random mechanism chooses between the token secured nodes, to make it more difficult to say which nodes are included within the consensus process. The chosen nodes are allowed to participate within consensus and one of the nodes can build the new block. The reward for doing so are some new tokens, which are shared between the people which locked their tokens to secure the node. Locking token within a node is called „staking“, this is where the name comes from. The basic idea behind is, those who invest money and bind this to a node, are not interested in doing harm to the network. They are interested in a node which work according to the rules of the network, to get the rewards and to proof the reliability of the system. Another variant of the so called PoS-consensus mechanism is the so called „delegated Proof of Stake“ (dPoS), where nodes, which can become staking nodes, need to be elected by all token owners, the so-called community. If the community don’t trust the node provider, they can’t participate and will not get rewards. This is another hurdle a malicious node provider would have to take, but this also leads to a more centralized network. PROOF OF WORK Talking about ensuring consensus algorithms, we must mention the first and still most common one. It is used within the Bitcoin network and is often controversy discussed. Not because it is insecure, but the amount of energy it requires. The Bitcoin network uses a so-called PROOF OF WORK (PoW) mechanism to secure the consensus. Simply explained, those who add blocks and participate within the consensus, have to participate within a battle about calculation power. To participate within this battle and to get rewards, you must invest in special hardware and energy. The more calculation power you provide, the bigger your chance to get more block rewards. Proof of work requires solving a cryptographic riddle from the participants with processing power which is getting more difficult the more calculation power is within the network. Without trying to solve the riddle, you can’t participate within the consensus process or getting elected generating a new block. Those who do the work and try to solve the riddle, are so called „MINER’s“, they mine for the reward. As we know it from PoS, there is a reward for sharing the processing power with the network. The so-called block rewards are generated out of nothing and added to the network. Beside the block rewards the transaction fees, paid for every transaction, will be shared between the miners as well. The new generated bitcoins for each new block and the paid fees keep the network alive. This explains why the Bitcoin network requires as much energy. Solving the more and more difficult riddles requires processing power and this consumes energy. Beside the already mentioned examples like “Proof of Stake” and “Proof of Work” other methods in finding consensus exist. As another example we want to name the „Fast Probabilistic Consensus with Weighted Votes“, which doesn’t require any staking or miners. At the end, the method of finding consensus need to fit the use case. Below you will find additional information and examples for consensus mechanism: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/05/the-problem-of-distributed-consensus/ https://emurgo.io/en/blog/explain-proof-of-stake-pos-dpos https://learn.bybit.com/blockchain/what-is-proof-of-work-in-blockchain/ Fast probablistic consensus: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.00928.pdf We want to give credit to „Schmucklos“, who provides an excellent source for information on his webpage https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/. However, this is only available in German.

A good introductory paper from the Bitkom Communication Technologies Working Group for a brief and easy-to-understand technological classification of the topic. At https://www.bitkom.org/Bitkom/Publikationen/Handreichung-Open-RAN the paper is available. We look forward to further cooperation with Bitkom in the communication technology working group. As a long-standing member of the digital association of Germany, Bitkom e.V., we are in close contact with over 2,700 companies from the digital economy and are vigorously promoting the digitization of the economy, society and administration. Among other things, we support Bitkom's ambitions in the following bodies: Member of the main board / State spokesman for Hesse-Germany (Jürgen Hatzipantelis) Working group Digital Transformation Working group on corporate law & compliance Working group Industry 4.0 Market & Strategy Working group Communication Technologies ​