The 1st nmaas User Workshop, organised within the GÉANT GN5-2 project and hosted by GRNET, successfully took place on 20–21 October 2026 in Athens, Greece.

The two-day event brought together 41 participants, including 25 on-site and 16 remote attendees, for more than 25 presentations, live demonstrations and discussions. Users, adopters, developers and stakeholders exchanged practical experiences, presented real-world use cases and explored opportunities for the future development of the nmaas platform.

The workshop covered a broad range of topics related to the development, deployment and operation of nmaas, including:

• Platform developments and roadmap: Recent improvements, upcoming features and future priorities.
• Application catalogue and AI-assisted operations: Catalogue updates and emerging opportunities to integrate AI into platform operations.
• Real-world deployments: Practical experiences using nmaas for network management and monitoring.
• Virtual labs and distributed infrastructure: New applications, deployment scenarios and emerging use cases.
• Technical insights: Application lifecycle management, security, automation and operational best practices.

Discussions throughout the workshop provided valuable feedback on existing platform capabilities and highlighted areas for further development. Key topics included support for custom domains, automated application bundles, AI-assisted environment setup and troubleshooting, and application catalogue synchronisation.

These exchanges offered an opportunity to discuss practical challenges, share lessons learned and identify improvements that can better address the needs of the nmaas community.

The workshop reinforced the importance of community-driven development in the evolution of nmaas. By bringing users, developers and stakeholders together, the event encouraged knowledge exchange, strengthened collaboration and helped identify new opportunities to shape the platform’s future.