Dell pushes further and further into telco business – get the ops aligned
Just before MWC a year ago, Dell launched its Infrastructure Automation Suite, designed to automate the orchestration and lifecycle management of multi-vendor, network cloud infrastructure.
This year the vendor is still wrestling with getting the telco industry up to speed with becoming cloud-native, and now AI-native. So it has launched its Open Telecom Transformation Program, which will see the company bring its global services scale and knowledge to the business of telco cloud and AI transformation. Dell has mapped out a suite of services that guide or in some cases offload each major phase of the telco transformation journey: from Advisory to Implementation, Support and then managed Services.
That includes engaging with vendors, as well as operators, to accelerate their own cloud-native capabilities.
Dennis Hoffman, SVP & GM Telecom Systems Business said that the companies that have been able to go on the transformation journey have been greenfield operators or a few select T1s with massive in-house engineering know-how (Verizon, e.g.). For the rest, engagement has mainly been with architecture and CTO teams, but with little alignment with operational teams. Now he thinks that things are sort of at the “tipping point” as more operators realise they must grapple past the architecture charts.
Vendors too must change. We have not done a good job giving most operators confidence this is possible, or a roadmap
Hoffman said, “We’ve become convinced what is holding people back is people and process, not technology.” (Echoing this wise lad’s words from back in 2017) “As much as we have promoted architectural change from single stack to horizontal architecture – that has not yet been mirrored by operational change.”
Now Dell is all about pushing its expertise into those people and processes, as it were, using its knowledge of many transformation programmes at major multi-nationals, but with a telco flavour – it’s trained a bunch of people up on telco-specific requirements on real-team, security, reliability – those things we used to call “Carrier Grade” before that term came to intimate a large anchor tied to a cynical NetOps team tied to a tree.
Hoffman said, “The idea that there is a cloud ops and infra ops function is not new to hyperscaler or enterprise IT organisations. There’s IaaS and on top of that there needs to be app or function services, and because the stack is split there needs to be end-to-end observational capability. Vendors too must change. We have not done a good job giving most operators confidence this is possible, or a roadmap.”
The new program, then is at base a set of co-ordinated technology and organisational change plans, to be executed in concert.
“Operations has to be figured out in advance – typically the fact there is not a great plan for operations is what inhibits progress.”
Hoffman gave as an example the fact that there might be three silicon changes within a ten year telco investment window: meaning that in that window the price to performance ratio changes dramatically.
“So figuring out how and when to accommodate silicon changes is a meaningful chunk of lifecycle planning. Not to mention the software on top and how to take advantage of each new feature vs waiting for each new generation.”
See more from Dell here, plus other announcements on its work with Red Hat in telco infra blocks, AMD and AI tech.
Cohere moves its USM up a notch with Bell Canada
Can Cohere turn its Universal Spectrum Multiplier (USM) – smart channel estimation software that provides longer lasting MIMO channel condition predictions to base station schedulers – into Unstoppable Sales Momentum? Well, it has certainly had its tires (or tyres) kicked a few times, but now it’s definitely rolling off the forecourt. (Keep reading, if nothing else to see if we can extend this creaking metaphor far beyond its load-bearing parameters.)
Anyway, first off, DT lifted the hood (bonnet) of a near real time RIC implementation which ran USM as an xApp, then Vodafone got the thing up on bricks in the lab and said that yes that is pumping out some good numbers. Telstra, an investor, and Bell Canada were other operators evaluating the specs. Then Vodafone actually took the technology for a test drive round the streets of Ciudad Real. This field trial dispensed with the RIC version, instead integrating USM in a basestation that Cohere was responsible for.
That was last year’s news. Vodafone liked the ride which, allied to encouragement from Bell Canada for a leading vendor to integrate USM with its baseband, looked like a green light for Cohere Technologies, which said it was close to a market breakthrough in 2024.
A year later, then, and there has been no confirmed sales engagement, or publicity about a major vendor integration. (Vodafone’s Spring 6 tender has been ticking over in the background, with anticipation that Cohere might be a part of the contract awards, integrated with a certain vendor).
But now Cohere is back with news of a new trial, and this time it’s different again. This one is with Bell Canada and gone is the RIC, gone is the direct integration onto a partner vendor baseband. Coming in is the USM software running on a server which is “located next to the gNodeB”.
In Cohere’s words, “This conducted co-ordinated scheduling with a third-party base station to pair many single user (SU) devices to enable MU-MIMO capacity improvement of existing resources whenever possible.”
There’s still no further news on its pending integration with a major network vendor, but do note that Bell Canada this week also announced a long term deal with Nokia to deploy its cloud RAN on a Redhat OpenShift platform on Dell infrastructure. This would pave the way for Oepn RAN and is, SVP Networks Mark McDonald said, “a strategic move to build a future-proof, agile, and open network architecture”.
Qualcomm fixes DragonWing to cellular products
Qualcomm has announced a re-brand for its non-consumer facing silicon solutions, which includes the SoCs it designs for RAN products such as small cells, RUs and accelerator cards for DUs.
It is also rebranding its EdgeWise network automation platform, formed out of the assets it acquired when it bought C-SON provider CellWize, as Dragonwing RAN Automation Suite.
And Verizon goes for RIC
And there was immediate game time for the Dragonwing RAN Automation Suite (DRAS) at a major US network.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that an element which is designed to be open and interoperable is just that, but hey this is telecom where the gap between the standards specification and practical implementation is filled with the fallen bodies of good intentions.
Anyway this is a ridiculous pre-amble to saying that Verizon has implemented a RIC from one vendor – Qualcomm’s Dragonwing RIC, which as we said until today would have been known as EdgeWise – with an rApp from another. The app provider, however, is Samsung, which is of real note because what we’re getting here is a RIC provider that is different from the RAN layer. That, by the way, is something Samsung cautioned against in a paper last year, before slightly rowing back from the nature of its statement.
Anyway, now Samsung is only too delighted that its AI-powered Energy Saving Manager (AI-ESM) has been integrated into the DRAS, altough this blog post doesn’t actually call Qualcomm’s RIC out by name. Not sure why, it might just be a question of who is allowed to say what about the other partners involved.
This is pretty good news for Qualcomm, however, and also for fans of the third party RIC as a concept, given that third party RIC platforms in commercial RAN networks are as rare as hen’s teeth. Mostly we have seen operators go for the RIC platform or network management platform of the main RAN vendor they’re working with in that sector.
