Sterlite Technologies Ltd. (STL) recently announced a collaboration with VMware, an innovator in enterprise software, to develop virtual network functions for 5G access platforms for converged wireline-wireless technology. The companies say that, once available, these solutions will help enable single-click installation of complex 5G rollouts for telcos and large enterprises.
“We continue to drive relentless innovations to develop end-to-end network solutions for our customers,” commented Dr. Badri Gomatam, Group CTO, STL. "VMware provides the world’s leading cloud virtualization platform, and we are delighted to partner them and together deliver 5G access solutions for telcos and large enterprise customers. The combined offerings will bring a full stack of solutions for a converged wireline-wireless network for the industry, and further increase our overall addressable market."
STL reports that it has built network virtualization functions for transport and access solutions that are based on software-defined Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS) fundamentals, where the control plane elements and the orchestration can reside either in a central office, edge/far edge data center or central data center. The forwarding elements can be placed based on the application design requirements; since both the control and forwarding planes are disaggregated, this makes the solution flexible, scalable and programmable.
With the new collaboration, STL will leverage VMware's vCloud NFV [near-field virtualization] to install, manage and maintain the environment for network micro services such as switching, firewalls, etc. The solution will enable STL to provide a commercial and stable release to telco and large enterprise customers who are looking for a commercial rollout in the next few quarters.
The companies expect the collaborative solution will also help customers reduce capex and move to a subscription model as hardware and software modules can be added over time in a cloud native application for FTTX, Radio Intelligent Controller, RAN orchestration, metro DWDM, and other use cases.
“VMware vCloud NFV provides compute, storage, networking, management and operations capabilities, which along with the development capabilities that STL brings to our collaboration, will help provide an integrated solution to communication service providers,” said Gabriele Di Piazza, vice president of solutions and marketing, Telco and Edge Cloud, VMware. "With STL’s programmable network function suite across wired-wireless network deployments running on top of VMware Telco Cloud, we are in an advantageous position to support our mutual customers for their future network requirements."
Learn more at https://www.stl.tech/.