8. Looking to the Future

Across the previous seven chapters, several promising lights emerge. The community is maturing organisationally — moving toward more diversified funding, more documented governance, and broader service portfolios. The technical frontier has visibly advanced, with 100 Gbps connectivity now a reality and identity federation moving from planning to operation. The advanced-services pipeline points to a community pulling forward, with demand outpacing implementation in many areas — a healthy tension.

Three priorities suggest themselves for the period to the next survey. First, the gap between Demanded and Implemented in advanced services represents an obvious Asi@Connect collaboration opportunity: where one or two NRENs have already implemented a service that many more are planning, the project is ideally placed to drive knowledge transfer. Second, AI is now visibly on the agenda but adoption is uneven — the next survey should be able to track that progression in more granular detail. Third, gender balance in the technical workforce remains an area for community focus, where the ‘tech-girl’ capacity development programmes may result in the desired outcome.

Future editions can also deepen the analytical structure: per-NREN profile pages containing additional spotlight contributions and achievements from the named NRENs.