Guest Editorial: Next-Generation Network Automation for Industrial Internet-of-Things in Industry 5.0

Network automation has originated in the early 21st century by the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), which was initialized conceptually, including automated configuration, optimization, healing, and protection of network deployment. In the framework of 5G and upcoming 6G, softwarization and virtualization, as well as the conceived pervasive artificial intelligence (AI), have been activating and further proliferating network automation, supporting ubiquitous applications with diverse network demands, which have recently attracted plenty of research efforts.