VMware’s 5G-Ready NFV Platform adoption by CSPs

VMware, Inc. showcased how communications service providers (CSPs) across the world – including Millicom, Singtel, Telecom Italia, Telia Company and TIM Brasil – are adopting VMware’s Telco Cloud platform to accelerate time to revenue, automate service lifecycle, and simplify operations management.

“5G is the future and in order to take part in the new cloud economy and become digital service providers, CSPs must evolve. Telcos around the globe are choosing VMware to drive their digital transformation forward by adopting a software-defined, automated and virtualized infrastructure built on NFV,” said Shekar Ayyar, executive vice president and general manager, Telco and Edge Cloud, VMware.

VMware NFV Customers Share Their Stories

VMware’s Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) platform is relied upon by more than 100 operators to deliver their telecom services to 800 million subscribers globally.

Xavier Rocoplan, CTIO, Millicom, said, “We selected VMware as a strategic partner in this endeavor and are working with them to design and deploy a consistent platform for service and application delivery for all of our subsidiaries. Once operational, our cloud-based, 5G-ready network will help us continue building and expanding our digital highways across Latin America.”

Mark Chong, Group CTO, Singtel, said, “As part of our Networks 5.0 Vision and journey to Network Virtualization, we are working with a number of Cloud and Network Function vendors. VMware’s Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) platform provides us with flexibility in deploying virtual network functions (VNFs) from multiple vendors on a consistent and open platform, enabling us to design a network architecture that suits our unique needs and delivers new capabilities that support the needs of the consumer and enterprise business.”

Michele Gamberini, CTIO Telecom Italia, said, “VMware is key partner in this effort – we already operate a variety of virtual network functions (VNFs) leveraging VMware Telco Cloud infrastructure, and are looking to extend the partnership as we evolve our network in the future.”

Mauro Costa, Director of Network and IT Infrastructure, Telia Company, said, “We leverage VMware’s NFV platform to orchestrate and deliver a range of virtual functions and services to millions of customers across six countries. Using a single platform to manage a variety of functions, including the IP Multimedia Subsystem (vIMS), voice over 4G (VoLTE), the new Virtual Mobile Packet Core (vEPC) and other value-added services, has helped us streamline delivery of services to customers while reducing operational complexity.”

Leonardo Capdeville, CTIO, TIM Brasil, said, “We are able to deploy a wide variety of network functions from multiple leading VNF vendors on top of VMware’s NFV platform. The platform’s interoperability with myriad VNFs ultimately provides us with the flexibility we need to seamlessly deliver new services to our customers faster than ever before. As the current leader in 4G coverage across Brazil, we feel we’ve built a solid telco cloud foundation, in partnership with VMware, to be able to support 5G core services in the future.”

VMware Expands Its Telco & Edge Cloud Portfolio

VMware is continuously enhancing its telco cloud offerings across all areas of the telco network – including core, edge and RAN – to help customers achieve their long-term strategic 5G vision and immediate 4G business goals.

VMware Telco Cloud Automation, previously announced at VMworld 2019 Europe as Project Maestro, is a software solution for telco cloud orchestration and automation.

VMware Telco Cloud Automation helps CSPs:

• Accelerate time to revenue: Accelerate service time-to-revenue with a simplified, vendor-neutral and standard-compliant approach for designing and onboarding virtual network functions (VNFs), cloud native network functions (CNFs), or network services.
• Automate operations with multi-cloud agility: Define and apply policies using a comprehensive decision engine to automate day zero through more complex day two operations.
• Enhance customer experiences: Deliver a new level of experiences with adaptable and resilient services. The solution combines real-time decision-making capabilities with holistic Telco Cloud awareness for optimal close-loop actions that help deliver improved service quality.
• Transform to cloud-native networks: Evolve network architectures from OpenStack to cloud-native applications with seamless onboarding and orchestration over VMs and container-based infrastructure for a future-proof service delivery foundation. Distribute workloads at the core and edge and from private to public clouds for modern, unified network orchestration.
• Streamline orchestration: Streamline the CSP orchestration journey with native integration into VMware cloud technologies and Virtualized Infrastructure Managers (VIMs) for operational consistency and ease of deployment while maximizing infrastructure resource utilization.

• Simplify interoperability: Built as a modular and model-driven solution, the Generic VNF Manager (G-VNFM) and NFV Orchestrator (NFVO) components of the solution integrates any compliant ETSI MANO architecture. Telco Cloud Automation allows standards-based integration with OSS/BSS systems and Service Orchestrators through ETSI compliant interfaces. VMware further enhances interoperability and facilitates onboarding by expanding partner VNF certifications to cover infrastructure and orchestration through the VMware Ready for NFV program. To date, Telco Cloud Automation has been tested and integrated with VNFs and CNFs from Affirmed Networks, Altiostar, Altran, Avi Networks, Maven