Mobile World Congress in Barcelona always brings an exciting week of news. This influx of innovation is always incredibly exciting for us over here at VMware. It’s a sign that this digital transformation is enabling new relationships, bringing new products to market faster, and empowering avenues to new revenue. If you’ve been watching the news build over the last few weeks, you likely noticed that VMware has announced a significant number of expanded relationships, exciting releases and outstanding customer momentum.
It’s A LOT of news, so I boiled it all down for you here.
VMware announced CSP customer momentum, expanded partnerships, and product advancements at Mobile World Congress 2023 that will help communication service providers (CSPs) capture opportunities from 5G to the edge to move their business forward.
First up, customer news.
- Vodafone Qatar selected VMware to enhance their 5G services roll-out. Leveraging VMware Telco Cloud Platform, Vodafone Qatar will fully apply the power modern cloud infrastructures to enable their 5G vision to simplify new service creation and deployment – supporting the digitization ambitions in line with Qatar National Vision 2030.
- DISH continues to modernize their RAN with Samsung and VMware. Samsung has delivered an initial shipment of 24,000 Open RAN-compliant radios and 5G virtualized RAN solutions on VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN to DISH Wireless for their network buildout. Together, the companies will continue to accelerate 5G commercial network deployments across the United States to provide reliable and fast nationwide coverage to millions of DISH Wireless network users.
- Softbank announced successful deployment of VMware Telco Cloud Platform in their 5G core. With the solution in place, SoftBank has achieved two key objectives: 1- by adopting a horizontal, common infrastructure for their 5G core network, they can now easily unify their architecture leading to increased efficiencies and improved automation. 2 – improved automation allows Softbank to dramatically accelerate time to market for deploying new, innovative services, giving them a competitive edge. Read more here.
Next up, partner news.
VMware’s partner ecosystem continues to expand in value for the transforming CSP community. In addition to the partner announcements below, two of our partner programs continue to offer new value to customers and partners alike:
Ready for Telco Cloud surpassed 300+ certified network functions. The VMware Ready for Telco Cloud program portfolio of functions accelerates deployments for service providers by reducing integration complexities. The certification experience has been further enhanced for partners to reduce network function onboarding time with VMware Telco Cloud Automation. The Continuous Onboarding Verification (COV) streamlines the CSAR creation process by allowing the process to be tailored to each customers’ requirements. Recent certifications include Accedian Networks and 6WIND VSR.
RIC Partner Program continues to build momentum.VMware has grown its RIC partner program with the release of the RIC software development kit (SDK), which provides access to an SDK and code that helps RIC partners drive rApps and xApps development. Recent addition of applications in the program include AirHop’s AI/ML powered Dynamic Energy Savings rApp for Open RAN.
Partner Announcements:
- Aira and VMware have demonstrated the first xApp to dramatically improve 5G MU-MIMO efficiency. Aira is a pioneer in the application of Machine Learning to radically improve wireless performance through its near-real time xApp on the VMware RIC. The solution delivers advanced 5G RAN capabilities via channel estimation and prediction. Please read more here.
- Arrcus and VMware partner to create the modern Telco Cloud for next-gen 5G services. The joint solution combines the Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform with VMware Telco Cloud Platform architecture, providing CSPs with end-to-end slicing for 5G, from radio access network (RAN) to multi-access edge computing (MEC) to core networks. This capability, which leverages Arrcus’ advanced traffic engineering technology, lets CSPs divide their networks into smaller, more manageable segments, which can be easily controlled and monitored. Read more here.
- Marvell and VMware enable CSPs to enhance their RAN locations to meet the demands of 5G’s increased capacity and use cases, optimizing the revenue and efficiency of each RAN site to Enable Integrated Base Stations & Cloud RAN Accelerators. Read this blog to learn more.
- Nokia and VMWare are driving 5G cloud RAN transformation through joint innovation. We have continued our validation work with Nokia’s latest software releases for vDU and vCU, ensuring optimized RAN operations. Nokia has also expanded its reach to layer 1 of the RAN, demonstrating improved performance in the uplink/downlink of the network. This extension has optimized the overall RAN operations, providing CSPs with an innovative solution for their network needs.
- NTT DATA and VMware expand our partnership to accelerate Open RAN adoption and deployment. Through combined solutions and services, we will further collaborate to enable the industry to move towards an Open RAN leveraging horizontal, modern telco clouds to achieve greater scale, efficiency and agility in their radio access networks.our partnership to accelerate Open RAN adoption and deployment. Through combined solutions and services, we will further collaborate to enable the industry to move towards an Open RAN leveraging horizontal, modern telco clouds to achieve greater scale, efficiency and agility in their radio access networks.
- Oracle and VMware help CSPs modernize their networks by seamlessly incorporating Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) including OCI Dedicated Region as an integral part of their 5G network function architecture. VMware Telco Cloud Platform – Public Cloud, with an integration with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, will help deliver greater flexibility for CSPs to design and implement their end-to-end networks with rich ecosystem of VMware verified network functions, enabling them to deploy services in Oracle’s public cloud with 40+ global regions or with Dedicated Region to create a dedicated cloud on-premises.
- Samsung and VMware open the path for 5G by achieving end-to-end telco cloud automation as well as collaborating to help CSPs enable Open RAN. We co-developed a validated architecture and cell site deployment model that integrates the Samsung virtualized Distributed Unit (vDU) running on the VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN. The two companies are working together to make the shift to a cloud-native architecture easy and more secure for CSPs. Samsung and VMware have championed production deployments of Samsung’s 5G Core, which include User Plane Function (UPF), Network Slicing Selection Function (NSSF), Session Management Function (SMF), Access and Mobility Function (AMF) and Network Repository Function (NRF) on the VMware Telco Cloud Platform 5G.
- WWT, Mavenir, HPE and VMware announced a new partnership aimed at developing an Open Radio Access Network framework. This partnership is focused on driving the telecom industry forward and accelerating adoption of Open RAN technology by communication service providers (CSPs). This strategic partnership has unveiled a complete, end-to-end Open RAN ecosystem that CSPs can deploy at scale. WWT, as the single system integrator, assumes responsibility for testing and ensuring the interoperability of the multi-vendor solutions. Read more here.
Don’t miss this the product news.
- Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) framework provides a full-stack, closed-loop automation and assurance solution. To allow CSPs to deploy multi-vendor services and tailored customer experiences in a dynamic, multi-cloud environment, this framework leverages VMware Telco Cloud Automation, VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance and VMware RIC. Read this blog to learn more.
- Project Kauai was announced to expand VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN deployment options to include bare metal resources. While CSPs continue to benefit from VMware ESXi, Project Kauai will complement the hypervisor by running disaggregated and virtualized RAN functions directly on a bare metal server with VMware Tanzu. Project Kauai will add choice and flexibility through VMware Telco Cloud Platform to help customers deploy the most demanding areas of their RAN – far edge cell sites. Read this blog to learn more.
- VMware Telco Cloud Platform, powered by VMware NSX, is further enhancing its telco-grade smart networking and lateral security capabilities. With recent advances, including the DPU-based acceleration announced last August, VMware NSX offers accelerated networking and security performance for VNF and CNFs, while enhancing network observability and increasing the host resources available to applications.
- General Availability was announced for DPU-based acceleration of lateral security features like distributed firewall and distributed intrusion detection and prevention along with energy efficiency use cases for 4G/5G core load balancing needs through VMware NSX. The solution offers accelerated networking and security performance for VNF and CNFs, while enhancing network observability and increasing the host resources available to applications.
- Enhanced remote worker/device connectivity and intelligent wireless capabilities were announced for SD-WAN and SASE customers. VMware is now inviting select customers and partners to evaluate the VMware SD-WAN Client across numerous use cases. Real world tests have shown VMware SD-WAN can provide over more than 40% improvement in QoE for voice and video applications when using satellite and LTE. In addition to delivering the highest application quality, the platform ensures the highest network utilization through adaptive thresholds designed from real world learnings from more than 100,000 LTE and satellite connections in use today by VMware customers. Read this blog to learn more.
- VMware Private Mobile Network provides enterprise-first private connectivity service. The managed service is delivered by expert wireless network providers. VMware Private Mobile Network seamlessly integrates with existing IT management platforms and incorporates VMware’s industry leading compute, network, security, and edge intelligence solutions. Read this blog to learn more.
But wait, there is still more news.
- Sustainability is top priority for nearly every CSP around the world. It’s with that in mind that we released an update on how VMware solutions support more green operations from the data center and core to the RAN and edge. Read this blog to learn how to “do MORE with less.
- VMware is featuring a lot of RAN innovation in our booth. A highlight of what we’ll be demonstrating is an exciting new world-first rAppathon – an app development challenge gathering developers from to pitch RAN xApps and rApps developed on the VMware RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) platform. The innovations will be judged by a panel of judges including industry leading analysts and communications service providers. The winner of the competition will be announced in an in-booth event on Tuesday evening (keep an eye on social media to learn about the winner).
- The new VMware Certified Professional education program and certificate for VMware SD-WAN and SASE will help partners and customers identify professionals with the skills and expertise necessary to effectively deploy and manage VMware SD-WAN solutions. Read this blog to learn more.
VMware at Mobile World Congress 2023
VMware’s cloud smart solutions are on display at its Mobile World Congress stand – Hall 3.0, Stand 3M11.
