Dell wants to help accelerate a major mobile industry shift

Dell has taken the wraps off a new range of hardware, software, and services that it says will make it easier and quicker for mobile operators to build networks that take advantage of open and cloud architectures in the 5G era.

The shift to cloud-native networks will make their networks more scalable and cost-effective, allowing them to rapidly roll out new services and reduce costs. Meanwhile technologies such as Open RAN will enable a shift away from highly integrated, proprietary equipment and allow operators to mix and match innovations from multiple vendors and use commoditised hardware.

This shift towards openness and cloud-native infrastructure has caused growing convergence between the telecoms and IT industries, with heavyweights like Dell, Google, HPE, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle all taking a keen interest.

Dell targets telcos

Ahead of Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona next week, Dell says its latest offering will simplify and accelerate the deployment of modern networks, aiding the open telecoms ecosystem and helping operators with their transition.

“Communications service providers are changing how they build and deploy open networks, so they can develop innovative services that capture the edge opportunity,” said Dennis Hoffman, senior vice president and general manager, Dell Technologies Telecom Systems Business. 

“Our expanded telecom solutions portfolio gives network operators the speed and simplicity they need to quickly modernise their networks and monetise new services.”

The Dell Telecom Multi-Cloud Foundation comprises hardware, orchestrator management software and support for integrated telecom platform from the likes of Red Hat, VMware and Wind River. Dell is also adding bare metal orchestrator modules to its software, meaning operators can deploy and lifecycle manage the entire cloud foundation stack.

This gives them a scalable cloud foundation spanning the core, edge, and radio layers of the network for their open hardware and software environment, making it more efficient and quicker to rollout new services.

A new Open RAN accelerator card includes the same Marvell baseband silicon technology that powers conventional networks, so that virtualised and Open RAN architectures can offer superior performance with lower cost and power consumption.

Dell has also announced steps to grow its open partner ecosystem with two new designs that make it easier to deploy edge infrastructure and 5G cores, making it easier to integrate network components from multiple partners and reducing the time needed to design, test and deploy new services.

Finally, the company is expanding its service and lab capabilities so that operators can rapidly deploy new network innovations with low risk. Dell ProDeploy for NFVI combines compute, networking, and telecom cloud software so customers can build optimum Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) infrastructure, while the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab Solution Integration Platform connects operator and partner labs into a mini network to accelerate the testing process.