Dell’s industry-first co-engineered solution with Wind River speeds the adoption of open, cloud-native network technologies

Wind River and Dell Technologies have teamed up to create a telecom cloud infrastructure solution to help communications service providers (CSPs) reduce complexity and speed up their cloud-native network deployments.

According to Analysys Mason, the CSP network cloud infrastructure industry will quadruple from $6.9 billion in 2020 to $30.1 billion by 2026.

In addition, Dell’s telecom partner certification program simplifies the process for technology partners to validate and integrate their products in a rapidly growing open technology.

While typical enterprises’ clouds are distributed geographically and subject to stringent service level agreements (SLAs), mobile networks must meet those same strict SLAs while supporting a breadth of software, compute, and networking technologies.

Dennis Hoffman, senior vice president and general manager, Dell Technologies Telecom Systems Business says as the telecom network disaggregates, network operators are challenged to effectively acquire, deploy, test and operate a myriad of open, cloud-native solutions.

“With our portfolio of software, solutions, development labs and partner programs, including our first open, telecom cloud engineered system with Wind River, a leader in Open RAN deployments, we can partner with communications service providers globally to simplify their transition to cloud-native technologies.” says Hoffman

Sam Saba, Head of Telecom, Asia Pacific and Japan, Dell Technologies says in an increasingly open ecosystem, they need a cloud platform that gives them access to best-of-breed solutions for increased resilience and monetisation of their services.

“Our new solution will further enable network operators to affordably ramp their transformation and ensure their cloud operating models are designed for more choice, agility, and speed-to-market,” says Saba

Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks helps to accelerate open, cloud-native network deployments

With Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks, Dell is taking an entirely new approach to solving the complexities of cloud-native network deployments.

Using the cloud-native infrastructure block simplifies telecom cloud network deployment and management, while also accelerating the adoption of new technologies and lowering operational expenses (OpEX).

According to ACG Research, CSPs using Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks can save up to 42% on OpEx over five years, resulting in a 134% return on investment compared to using telecom cloud infrastructure without Dell technology.

The Dell Telecom Multicloud Foundation, released earlier this year, includes Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell Bare Metal Orchestrator management software, and telecom cloud software platforms integrated by CSPs, including Wind River Studio.

The first co-engineered system with Wind River, factory-integrated to host telecom workloads that can be scaled easily with automation, is now available from Dell. andincludes hardware and software blocks that are tailored to telecom workloads and use cases, ranging from network core to Open RAN Distributed Units (DUs) and Centralised Units (CUs).

With Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River, CSPs can:

• Reduce time spent on the planning, design, validation, procurement and upgrade process.

• Reduce the complexity and operational burden of managing a distributed cloud while helping ensure a consistent telecom-grade experience, Wind River Studio can be automated to deploy and manage.

• Reduce the time and money required to deploy and integrate infrastructure for workloads by factory integrating and testing continuously and reduce “day-2” operational costs by design and integration testing.

• Provide proactive, predictive, and reactive support to maximise uptime, in addition to 24-hour access to Wind River Studio experts covering the entire cloud stack.

Andy Dunkin, head of OpenRAN RF & Digital Platforms, Vodafone says the introduction of Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks represents the type of collaboration and innovation needed between vendors to affordably scale Open RAN,”

“We believe that this new technology will make it easier to design, deploy, and manage networks, which will in turn allow us to deliver new Open RAN services to customers more quickly and efficiently.” says Dunkin

Wind River Studio provides the Containers-as-a-Service layer for a distributed cloud and the tools to automate and optimise “Day 2” operations at scale, based on proven Wind River Studio technology and delivers mature production-ready offerings live in deployments with leading operators.

Kevin Dallas, president and chief and executive officer, Wind River says our collaboration with Dell will help address complex CSP challenges in deploying and managing a physically distributed, ultra-low-latency cloud-native infrastructure for intelligent edge networks.

“As the de facto infrastructure for OpenRAN and 5G vRAN and only 5G solution that is commercially deployed at scale, Wind River Studio enables flexible networks and offers validated architectures to help service providers quickly and reliably deploy new services with industry-leading total cost of ownership for a cloud native future.” says Dallas

As the telecom industry’s open ecosystem continues to grow, it becomes difficult to ensure that technologies can seamlessly work together to support each CSP’s network requirements.

Dell is introducing the Telecom Partner Self-Certification Program for ISVs and other industry partners to certify their software readiness for integration on Dell hardware.

John Healy, vice president and general manager of Customer and Ecosystem Enabling Division, Intel’s Network and Edge Solutions Group says “Intel^® Edge Insights for Industrial, a middleware software optimised for AI deployments at the edge, is the first Intel software platform to receive self-certification and ready for deployment on Dell infrastructure.

“We believe the great features that Edge Insights for Industrial has, such as video and time series ingestion and inference, will allow Dell’s customers to deploy AI capabilities quickly and with excellent performance on Intel-based Dell infrastructure.” says Healy.

Partners can verify that their applications run effectively on Dell hardware and operating systems in the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab. After their software is certified, Dell telecom platforms will accept it immediately with the first applications to be certified as part of the Telecom Partner Self-Certification Program are Intel, Litmus, and Versa Networks.

Vatsal Shah, chief executive officer, Litmus says “Mobile networks are becoming more virtualised and open, which has given startups, like Litmus, the ability to lower the barrier to entry in the telecom market.

“Gaining access to and certifying with the Telecom Partner Self-Certification Program will enable us to make our manufacturing edge IIoT solutions more easily consumable and scalable for communications service providers and enterprise customers.” says Shah.

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