The TMForum DTW Ignite conference is in full gear this week in Copenhagen, so it’s the perfect time to delve into the exciting collaboration between Dell and Ericsson. Announced on May 23, 2024, this strategic partnership aims to develop plans for tailored network cloud infrastructure and advising communications service providers (CSPs) on their cloud transformation journeys.
Ericsson and Dell are also collaborating to explore how comprehensive service orchestration and assurance of Enterprise Edge and differentiated connectivity services can reduce implementation and operational, cost and risk for CSP’s through certified interoperability between Ericsson Service Orchestration and Assurance and Dell Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite.
According to a recent study sponsored by Dell Technologies, a majority of CSPs recognize the critical importance of network transformation for their survival. However, 96% of them report lagging efforts due to budget constraints, time limitations and concerns about reliability and security. The partnership between Dell and Ericsson aims to address these challenges by developing and implementing Open RAN-based network cloud transformation strategies that are simple, reliable and cost-effective. The integration of Ericsson Service Orchestration Assurance with Dell Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite is being explored to deliver a comprehensive solution for CSPs.
Addressing CSPs’ Needs for Automation at the Edge
The solutions being developed aim to enable service provider choice and flexibility in architecting their multicloud service platforms and enabling them to:
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- Orchestrate and assure distributed cloud Infrastructure for any type of service workload.
- Provide on-demand automation and orchestration of network slicing based on service characteristics.
- Expose service and network capabilities that enable new business models.
- Optimize CapEx and OpEx cost in the operationalization of edge services.
Consider a retail business aiming to improve in-store management using video cameras with image processing and video analytics. The goal is to profile the customer journey through the store to enhance the store’s layout. However, IT infrastructure for in-store processing is expensive and requires expertise at store sites.
For security reasons, video must remain local and cannot be sent to a central public cloud. In some cases, response time is crucial, necessitating traffic processing close to the store. Here, the CSP would offer a 5G service with a private network slice to the retailer, connecting their cameras directly to the CSP’s edge cloud where all video processing and analytics would take place.
Ericsson and Dell aim to provide CSPs with an end-to-end automation platform to deliver this service. The platform would:
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- Automate the discovery. New or existing compute and storage resources capable of meeting the application requirements at the required location would be discovered and allocated to the appropriate resource pools.
- Make infrastructure updates. This includes firmware upgrades, changes to RAID configurations, updates to the operating system and software, etc.
- Automate the deployment. The enterprise application deployment would be automated.
- Set Up a secure, private 5G network slice. A secure, private 5G network slice would be established.
- Ensure continuous monitoring and service assurance. The network slice would be continuously monitored and managed to meet SLAs.
Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting partnership and the innovative solutions it promises to bring to the telecom network cloud transformation landscape.
