Dell speeds 5G and Open RAN innovation

Dell Technologies  introduces new telecom software, solutions and services to help communications service providers (CSPs) accelerate their open, cloud-native network deployments and create new revenue opportunities at the edge.

To support the massive growth of data expected from 5G applications and services, CSPs are moving compute infrastructure to the edge and looking to integrate a broad ecosystem of software vendors to capture new revenue opportunities. New technologies like Open RAN (ORAN) are giving CSPs a broader set of options for deploying network infrastructure to support future growth. However, this trend is leading to a large, geographically distributed, open compute deployment that can be difficult to deploy and manage.

“As server technology proliferates through increasingly open telecom networks, the industry sees an immediate and growing need for remote lifecycle management of a highly distributed compute fabric,” said Dennis Hoffman, senior vice president and general manager, Dell Technologies Telecom Systems Business. “Bare Metal Orchestrator gives communication services providers an easier way to deploy and manage open network infrastructure while saving costs and time, allowing them to focus on delivering new and differentiated services to their customers.”

New Dell Technologies software modernises network deployment and management

Dell Technologies Bare Metal Orchestrator telecom software offers the breadth and scale to automate the deployment and management of hundreds of thousands of servers across geographic locations to support ORAN and 5G deployments. The company’s first software to come from its Project Metalweaver initiative, Bare Metal Orchestrator gives CSPs the tools to discover and inventory servers, bring them online and deploy software, regardless of where they reside in the network. With declarative automation, Bare Metal Orchestrator tells the targeted server what to do, so that tasks and workflows – such as deploying software stacks and workloads – can be completed quickly and efficiently without human intervention. The software combines open standards technology with Dell Technologies intellectual property.

With Bare Metal Orchestrator, CSPs can eliminate days or weeks of configuration and provisioning to bring network hardware into a workload-ready state. This reduces the time it takes for an open network to deliver differentiated, profitable services at scale. Over time, the software can reduce operational costs by orchestrating server lifecycle management and minimising errors and reliance on IT expertise. ACG Research estimates an up to 57% OpEx savings for CSPs deploying Bare Metal Orchestrator in their networks.1

“As we prepare for the future of 5G mobility and edge, we at T-Mobile have been closely collaborating with Dell Technologies to develop a product that allows engineers to drastically reduce the time spent managing thousands of servers across hundreds of sites,” said Quaid Campbell, director, network engineering cloud services, T-Mobile. “Solutions like Bare Metal Orchestrator allow us to focus on building out new strategic services, automating server provisioning and management tasks to software systems instead of engineers.”

“The industry is making progress toward Open RAN networks, but network operators are challenged with how to operate them cost-effectively at massive scale,” said Caroline Chappell, Research Director, Analysys Mason. “To keep pace with innovation, telecom operators require more agile ways to deploy and manage their network infrastructure. Bare metal orchestrators, such as Dell Technologies’ software, will be key to the flexible and efficient automation of the heterogeneous bare metal environments operators tell us they need to underpin cloud-native open RAN functions.”

New telecom solutions simplify network deployments, deliver better experiences

Dell Technologies continues to expand its open partner ecosystem by introducing new telecom solutions, reference architectures and services to accelerate ORAN and edge deployments while providing CSPs more network support:

•       Dell Technologies Validated Solution for Mavenir Open vRAN and VMware Telco Cloud Platform brings together many industry-leading RAN partners within a validated solution of hardware and software, helping CSPs accelerate their transformation to ORAN technologies with pre-tested multi-vendor solutions.

•       Dell Technologies Reference Architecture for Wind River Studio can streamline and reduce the cost of deploying a cloud-native, edge network while improving network performance.

•       Dell Technologies Respond and Restore for Telecom service provides customers with support service level agreements to help maximise network uptime, limit network disruptions and maintain business continuity. Organisations have 24-hour access to designated Dell Technologies experts for complete support of the Dell Technologies infrastructure running their network, along with a full set of proactive, predictive and reactive capabilities.