Ericsson has had a partnership with Dell developing Cloud RAN solutions since mid-2023. The now famous contract announcement with AT&T in December 2023 named Dell as one of the ecosystem partners included in the deal.
Now the companies look to be deepening that partnership into something more strategic. They say they will, via a new agreement:
- Collaborate to develop tailored network cloud transformation plans and advise CSPs on network architectures and operating models, while also reducing the risks associated with deploying on open, multi-vendor environments. Dell and Ericsson plan to co-create solutions that drive energy efficiencies and innovate on Cloud RAN infrastructure operations.
- Commercially introduce Ericsson Cloud RAN software on Dell PowerEdge servers. The solution will offer continuous integration testing and lifecycle management to speed deployment and de-risk day-2 operations around updates and upgrades, with Dell as a solution partner.
- Co-develop services that simplify the entire deployment process from factory validation to installation and ongoing operational management, backed by Dell and Ericsson’s joint support for any integrated solution.
The two companies are leaning on a Dell-sponsored study that they say shows CSPs are struggling with their cloud transformation programmes. The companies said Dell and Ericsson’s partnership “aims to address these concerns by working alongside CSPs to develop simple and reliable Open RAN-based network cloud transformation strategies, using Dell and Ericsson integrated solutions and support.”
The partnership will ease some of the telco concerns around budget, time, reliability and security, the companies said. Certainly, as TMN has reported, telcos are still grappling with extracting the full benefits from cloud native operations and deployments, although Dell and Ericsson didn’t really call out how the partnership would address these concerns.
Perferred partner?
The release also doesn’t state the extent to which Ericsson’s partnership with Dell will make the American company its preferred integration option for Cloud RAN deployments. Ericsson has also demonstrated its vRAN working on Intel-based HPE hardware, for example. Will Ericsson also progress with its own integrated offering, based on its own dedicated hardware, known as RAN Compute? Ericsson has previously laid out that its Cloud RAN approach would take a dual path, with an Ericsson RAN Compute in parallel with a General Purpose Hardware approach.
The release mentions the partnership would ease the introduction of Cloud RAN to new markets. What sort of new markers? One new Cloud RAN market for Ericsson has been its win with AT&T – where Dell was named a partner. Is this strategic partnership a sort of productisation of that partnership – forming a de facto mini-ecosystem for Ericsson Cloud RAN ambitions?
Ericsson is not alone in announcing a Cloud RAN partnership with Dell. Nokia said in February this year that it would be pointing its customers towards Dell hardware to support their cloud RAN workloads.
In that announcement Nokia said it would be using Dell as its “preferred infrastructure partner for existing Nokia AirFrame customers”, offering Dell’s technology as the infrastructure of choice for telecom cloud deployments.
A release said, “Nokia and Dell will help transition existing AirFrame customers over time to Dell’s broad infrastructure portfolio, including Dell PowerEdge servers, purpose built for modern telecom network workloads from core to edge to RAN.”
Architectures for Open and Cloud RAN
Certainly Nokia and Ericsson have taken different approaches to vRAN and hardware integration. Nokia’s anyRAN approach plugs in its Marvell-based SmartNIC DU in-line accelerator card into a range of different servers – whether they themselves are Intel or ARM-based, or AWS servers. These include, of course, Dell servers. And it’s not so long since a joint release said Nokia and Dell wold “pave the way” on open Cloud RAN.
Ericsson, with its approach has said that it too wants to be fully portable between different hardware platforms, but in a slightly different way – utlising a lookaside architecture for L1 accleration. Worth remembering what Mårten Lerner, Head of Cloud RAN at Ericsson, told TMN at MWC 2023.
“I think the difference is that we want to become fully portable between different hardware platforms. If we look at the alternatives out on the market, and I think SmartNIC is one way of expressing it, there is also an acceleration component, which means that you connect again the software to the hardware in a way that we have initially taken a step to go away.
“So our solution is completely disaggregated, while some of the other companies are integrating their L1 acceleration with their L1 software. And I think this has not been fully understood in the industry about the portability of the solution, because if you then go with smartNIC or their acceleration, you’re still becoming proprietary to that L1, versus us being agnostic across the different hardware platforms that we support.”
Ericsson and HPE Cloud RAN demo at MWC 2023
UPDATE – 24-5-24
Ericsson was able to get back to us answering a few questions about this partnership. As they took the time to answer our questions quite fully, we have reproduced the their answers below. As you can see, it is very much of the view that it continues with its own RAN Compute platform [as detailed above] and with other third party hardware platforms. Along with that, it says the”target market consists of CSP customers worldwide evolving their networks with programmability and open interfaces, where deployment of Cloud RAN is a stepping stone and a foundation for continuous deployment and fast adoption of new services.”
Q: Is there any element of preference for Ericsson in now having Dell as strategic hardware partner for Cloud RAN. You already, for instance, also have a partnership with HPE for vRAN integrated on its servers.
A: No, our collaboration with Dell Technologies complements our existing partnerships. We remain committed to diversification of the telecom ecosystem. Our common goal is to broaden the ecosystem and bring more flexibility to our customers.
Q. What is the impact for Ericsson’s integrated offering?
The offerings involved in this partnership are the pre-integrated solutions based on Ericsson Cloud RAN software and services, as well as Dell Technologies server hardware including PowerEdge servers, to commercially introduce Ericsson Cloud RAN software on Dell PowerEdge servers. The solution will offer continuous integration testing and lifecycle management to speed deployment and de-risk day-2 operations around updates and upgrades, with Dell as a solution partner.
Our portfolio offers two flavours for 5G RAN:
1) RAN software running on purpose-built Ericsson RAN Compute (Baseband or RAN Processor) hardware.
2) Ericsson Cloud RAN software on partner company server hardware, e.g. from Dell Technologies.
The new strategic partnership with Dell is based on the 2nd variant of our 5G RAN solutions. There is no impact to our portfolio for the first area, we will continue to invest in this portfolio and the latest generation was launched in November 2023.
Q: The release mentions easing introduction of Cloud RAN to new markets. Can you expand on what that means? What sort of new markets? One of the recent wins involving Dell, of course, is the AT&T deal. Is this a commercialisation of that partnership/ecosystem?
What we mean by easing the introduction is that Ericsson and Dell will work to pre-integrate the respective solutions reducing the adoption complexity and accelerating time-to-market for CSPs interested in embracing open and disaggregated telecom infrastructure. Ericsson and Dell will collaborate on product launches and a roadmap to ensure both parties are working together to drive capacity and performance evolution and TCO of Ericsson Cloud RAN software on Dell infrastructure
The target market consists of CSP customers worldwide evolving their networks with programmability and open interfaces, where deployment of Cloud RAN is a stepping stone and a foundation for continuous deployment and fast adoption of new services. Besides targeting CSPs that opt for a Cloud RAN solution, there are also market segments that can benefit from the partnership. Examples could be business targeting Department of Defence or leveraging Dell’s access to enterprise customers, where introduction of 5G connectivity can boost productivity in certain segments.
This announcement is separate from the AT&T deal announcement made last year in the US market, rather, one of a strategic partnership between Dell Technologies and Ericsson but definitely benefits from collaboration towards AT&T. A strategic partnership can of course apply to other (new) geographical markets.
