Ericsson and Intel have struck a new partnership to jointly develop a next-generation infrastructure management platform for communications service providers.
The multi-year collaboration, announced Monday, aligns Intel and Ericsson’s software-defined infrastructure (SDI) efforts, bolstered by advanced management capabilities and will converge Ericsson’s SDI Manager software and Intel’s Rack Scale Design (RSD) reference software.
“The resulting next-generation infrastructure management platform will deliver a new level of cloudlike agility, transparency and efficiency required for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), distributed cloud, and 5G,” Ericsson said in a statement.
The platform aims to help service providers bring new services to market more quickly, capitalize on their infrastructure and reduce cost of ownership.
Through the partnership efforts, operators can tap multi-vendor hardware options, Ericsson’s end-to-end software offerings, and Intel’s architectural solutions. The resulting jointly developed software and hardware offerings will be available in subsequent Ericsson hardware platforms and may also be available with Intel’s server products.
“5G will be transformative, accelerating today’s applications and triggering a wave of new usages and edge-based innovation,” said Sandra Rivera, SVP of Network Platform Group at Intel, in a statement. “Our infrastructure manageability collaboration with Ericsson will help communications service providers remove deployment barriers, reduce costs, and deliver new 5G and edge services with cloudlike speed on a flexible, programmable and intelligent network.”
Separately, last week Ericsson announced the opening of a new 26,000 square feet 5G training facility in Lewisville, Texas. The Lewisville Center of Excellence – Ericsson’s largest in the United States – will provide field services training and support for employees and partners as they prep for 5G-related network rollouts and maintenance. Operator-specific courses cover topics such as site installation and integration, radio base station installation, tower and rooftop installation, microwave alignment, deployment and network integration for 3G, 4G and 5G technologies, and virtual site support.
“Our goal to lead in 5G depends on providing quality installation, rollout and other services,” Head of Market Area North America (MANA) Niklas Heuveldop said in a statement. “To do this, we need to recruit and train the best teams to support customers’ ambitious 5G plans. This facility is the heart of those plans.”