Per Nihlén, Sunet, takes over as Chairman of the NORDUnet Customer Advisory Group (CAG).
To ensure swift coordination between the five Nordic NRENs and NORDUnet, the Customer Advisory Group was established almost two years ago. As the Chairman position rotates between the NRENs, Per Nihlén of Sunet is taking over from Teemu Kiviniemi, CSC.
“When the group was created, little did we know that the world was about to be hit by a pandemic. Due to COVID-19 we had to become more of an operational entity than was envisioned beforehand,” says Per Nihlén, CTO for network and services at Sunet. He has been a member of the group since its start.
“The past two years have been extremely busy for all of us, both the NRENs and NORDUnet. Obviously, when all Nordic universities converted campus activities to remote services, we needed to expand these tools quickly. A lot of very concrete decisions of both technical and economic nature had to be taken. This didn’t leave as much time for reflection as could be desired.”
The Customer Advisory Group consists of two members from each NREN – one is the actual group member while the other has a supporting capacity – plus the CEO and the CTO of NORDUnet.
The overall purpose of the Customer Advisory Group is to “improve communication, collaboration and alignment between the NRENs and NORDUnet to ensure customer satisfaction”. To that end, the group will provide recommendations to the CEO of NORDUnet, Per Nihlén explains:
“The idea is not that we should concern ourselves too much with the nitty-gritty of operational issues, but rather provide recommendations of strategic importance meaning significant network changes. However, as things were, we didn’t have a choice. Not to address the urgent challenges at hand would have been neglect. Still, I do look forward to us providing recommendations that reach beyond the next six months.”
