Dell and Wind River transform telecom cloud deployments

Dell is introducing a new telecom cloud infrastructure solution, co-engineered with Wind River, to help communications service providers (CSPs) reduce complexity and accelerate their cloud-native network deployments. 

To further power these solutions, Dell's telecom partner certification program simplifies the process for technology partners to validate and integrate their products within a rapidly growing open technology ecosystem.

Analyst Mason estimates the CSP network cloud infrastructure industry will quadruple from US$6.9 billion in 2020 to US$30.1 billion by 2026. 

However, unlike typical clouds used by enterprises, clouds for mobile networks must address distributed geographic areas and strict service level agreements (SLAs) while supporting a wide range of software, compute and networking technologies that have made these deployments complex and costly.

"As the telecom network disaggregates, network operators are challenged to effectively acquire, deploy, test and operate a myriad of open, cloud-native solutions," says Dennis Hoffman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Dell Technologies Telecom Systems Business. 

"With our portfolio of software, solutions, development labs and partner programs - including our first open, telecom cloud engineered system with Wind River; we can partner with communications service providers globally to simplify their transition to cloud-native technologies."

Sam Saba, Head of Telecom, Asia Pacific and Japan, Dell, adds, "Our partnership with Wind River Studio demonstrates our continued commitment to communications service providers across the Asia Pacific and Japan. 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." 

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

The fully engineered, cloud-native infrastructure block simplifies telecom cloud network deployment and management while accelerating the introduction of new technologies and lowering operational expenses (OpEX).

ACG Research estimates that CSPs deploying Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks can reduce OpEx by 42%, resulting in a 134% return on investment over five years versus deploying telecom cloud infrastructure without the Dell solution. 

As the fastest way to deploy the Dell Telecom Multicloud Foundation, launched earlier this year, these blocks include Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell Bare Metal Orchestrator management software, and a CSP's choice of integrated telecom cloud software platforms, beginning with Wind River Studio.

Dell is the first company to launch a co-engineered system with Wind River, designed and factory integrated to host telecom workloads that can scale easily with automation and streamlined support from Dell for the entire infrastructure stack. 

The validated and pre-packaged blocks of hardware and software are designed to meet specific telecom workload requirements and use cases, spanning the network core to Open RAN Distributed Units (DU) and Centralised Units (CU).

With Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River, CSPs can reduce time spent on the planning, design, validation, procurement and upgrade process.

These Blocks automate the deployment and management of Wind River Studio, significantly reducing the complexity and operational burden of managing a distributed cloud while helping ensure a consistent telecom-grade experience.

They also decrease the cost and time spent integrating and deploying infrastructure to a workload-ready state with factory integration and reduce Day 2 operational costs with continuous design and integration testing.

With Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River, CSPs can also gain streamlined, 24-hour access to designated Dell experts for the entire cloud stack, including Wind River Studio, with options for guaranteed response and restore times. In addition, Dell's services provide proactive, predictive and reactive support to maximise uptime. 

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

"We expect this new technology will simplify the design, deployment and management of networks, so new services on Open RAN can be delivered faster and more efficiently to customers."

Wind River delivers mature production-ready offerings based on proven Wind River Studio technology. 

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.

"Our collaboration with Dell will address complex CSP challenges in deploying and managing a physically distributed, ultra-low-latency cloud-native infrastructure for intelligent edge networks," says Kevin Dallas, President and Chief Executive Officer, Wind River. 

"As the de facto infrastructure for OpenRAN and 5G vRAN, and only 5G solution commercially deployed at scale, Wind River Studio enables flexible networks and offers validated architectures to help service providers deploy new services for a cloud-native future."

Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Wind River Studio will be globally available on November 9, 2022.

As the telecom industry's open ecosystem grows, it becomes more complex 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.

Partners have a simple and transparent process for validating their solutions on Dell hardware and operating systems in the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab. 

Once their solutions are certified, partners are assured that the quality of their software is compatible with and ready for deployment on Dell telecom platforms. 

The first solutions to be certified as part of the Telecom Partner Self-Certification Program are from Intel, Litmus and Versa Networks.

"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. Getting certified with the Telecom Partner Self-Certification Program, will make our manufacturing edge IIoT solutions more consumable and scalable for communications service providers and enterprise customers," notes Kelly Ahuja, Chief Executive Officer, Versa Networks.

The Dell Telecom Partner Self-Certification Program is available globally now.