Nokia and VMware have announced an expanded partnership that includes the development of integrated solutions to support communications service providers’ (CSPs) drive for operational improvements and cost efficiency through large-scale, multi-cloud operations.
After years of working with virtual or cloud-based network functions in limited production deployments, CSPs need to build out these functions at scale to handle the increasing use of new data-intensive applications for tomorrow’s 5G and edge computing use cases. Success of this strategy is dependent on seamless interoperability and efficient operations of cloud-based network functions.
Through the expanded partnership announced, the two companies will advance the interoperability between Nokia software applications and VMware’s Telco Cloud, including VMware vCloud NFV. Nokia and VMware will also increase their investments in a deeper partnership with technology collaboration and advanced research and development to develop integrated solutions.
As a result, CSPs will be able to more easily meet their business and use case objectives, using VMware cloud infrastructure that is engineered to work together with Nokia virtualised and containerised network functions.
Nokia and VMware have been working together to create seamless cloud redundancy by running Nokia’s applications, such as Nokia Service Management Platform, on VMware’s Telco Cloud platform and VMware HCX, an application mobility platform designed for simplifying application migration, workload rebalancing, and optimised disaster recovery across data centres and clouds.
This will enable customers to embrace a multi-cloud strategy to unify network and IT environments and connect them to private enterprise clouds, edge clouds, and public clouds.
Nokia will continue to focus on the technical certification of Nokia VNFs and software applications on VMware vCloud NFV platform through a dedicated, on-site VMware Ready for NFV Certification Lab.
The new lab includes performance characterisation to enable CSPs to properly configure their technology environments for the best results. With the Certification Lab, Nokia and VMware will serve customers in an accelerated fashion, keeping pace with new features and releases and enabling better roadmap alignment between the two companies’ portfolios.
Several Nokia software applications, such as Nokia CloudBand Application Manager and Nokia Smart Plan Suite, along with virtual IMS, virtual packet core and session border controller are already certified for operations in VMware cloud environments. These and others can be found on VMware Solution Exchange.
Shekar Ayyar, EVP and GM, Telco and Edge Cloud, VMware, said, “With the advent of 5G and edge computing, customers are adopting VMware’s container-ready Telco Cloud supported by innovative efforts like Project Maestro multi-domain orchestrator. We are delighted to partner with Nokia to enable faster deployment of Nokia virtual and containerised virtual functions on VMware cloud infrastructure, ultimately helping our customers prepare their telco cloud networks for the future.”
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