Dell Technologies and Orange have entered into an agreement to jointly explore developing key technology areas for distributed cloud architectures to deliver the real-time Edge use cases and new services opportunities 5G will create.

Realizing the full potential of edge computing, 5G innovation

5G will require a new breed of platforms supporting a rich catalogue of near real-time edge computing and IoT services. The companies will collaborate on meeting demands for new distributed architectures for 5G that combine the best of cloud and mobility. These distributed architectures will provide a common hardware foundation of automated, agnostic software-defined infrastructure, extending from on-premise to the radio to the core, to accelerate innovation and service delivery.

The new mobile platforms must be built on a trusted supply chain delivering an innovative ecosystem of solutions that fulfill the promise of 5G. They will use network telemetry to feed intelligent automation and service orchestration systems, using artificial intelligence to ensure consistent service levels and insight across the distributed environments. In short, all layers of the network stack will be visible to management systems, and those management systems will autonomously ensure both efficient network operations and high customer experience.

These technologies are the same that have been driving the realization of both enterprise data centers and public cloud. 5G extends these cloud and “IT-centric” requirements beyond traditional fixed-function hardware to deliver more dynamic, agile edge compute, storage and networking solutions. In order to capitalize on the new business opportunities that 5G will create, Communication Service Providers need open, industry standard architectures combined with software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), cloud native applications, and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC).

Tom Burns, senior vice president, Dell EMC Networking & Solutions, says, “We are working closely with Orange to combine our joint Telco best practices with decades of data center transformation experience to help service providers re-tool their operations to quickly and profitably roll out new 5G services. For 5G and telco cloud services, service providers are turning to IT-proven technologies such as IaaS, virtualization, and standardized infrastructure to deliver the required agility, security and control. Dell Technologies has helped our data center customers thrive for decades with a trusted, world-class supply chain and support system.”

Combining their respective expertise, Dell Technologies and Orange will collaborate on the definition and development of:

* Edge Technology use cases, business models and proof of concepts

* Open source consortia and partnerships for the edge ecosystem

* Definition and validation of infrastructure accelerators, such as FPGAs, GPUs, and SmartNICs, for edge workloads, including Cloud/Virtual RAN (CRAN/vRAN), MEC, and real-time, interactive, latency-sensitive applications

* AI/ML-enabled software to support remote automation of a multi-technology, heterogeneous edge built on virtual machines, containers, and bare metal workloads

* Edge infrastructure platforms supporting Telco environmental, space, operational and automation requirements.

Stéphane Demartis, vice president, Orange, Corporate Cloud Infrastructure, says, “Orange entered this agreement with Dell Technologies to work jointly on a variety of topics revolving around edge computing and acceleration technologies that will be key to reach the full promise of 5G. We believe it’s essential to prepare the ecosystem for telco use cases while progressing in our knowledge of the future technologies. Orange expects from this partnership with Dell EMC not only technical but also business outcomes in order to fuel our strategy towards Multi-access edge computing transformation.”