Mary Lennighan
A month ago Mavenir, a CLOUD CITY exhibitor at MWC21, announced a high-profile partnership deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS), a move designed to enable telcos to offload some of their applications to the public cloud then sit back and reap the benefits. Hint: for the most part, we’re talking simplification, speed and cost-savings here.
Essentially, the deal brings together Mavenir’s 4G and 5G products – cloud-native Open RAN, Converged 4G/5G Packet Core, IMS, and messaging – with AWS’s computing infrastructure, container capabilities, and big data analytics. It’s scalable, and uses the same tools and technologies AWS provides to enterprise applications.
“Working with AWS enables us to bring new customer-focused 5G use cases and 5G deployments to the market faster and with unique capabilities to realize true 5G potential,” said Bejoy Pankajakshan, Chief Strategy Officer at Mavenir.
“Mavenir’s solutions are designed to support full public cloud as well as hybrid cloud deployments,” he added.
Early indications are that the telcos are interested. Mavenir’s reference customer is US-based DISH Network, which is building out a cloud-native 5G network to challenge the mobile establishment in the US. “The collaboration with Mavenir and AWS allows us to build out our 5G network and messaging platforms in a true cloud-native manner, harnessing the speed and agility that the AWS cloud brings along with Mavenir’s expertise in deploying and operating cloud-native network functions,” said Sidd Chenumolu, Vice President of Technology Development at DISH.
Automation, agility, and flexibility are at the heart of this project
But, as Mavenir points out, its collaboration with AWS is beneficial as much for adding 5G and edge capabilities to an existing network as it is a greenfield 4G/5G network. While Telefonica’s Brazilian operation could hardly be described as a market newcomer, it is in the planning stages for a 5G standalone network that could include Mavenir/AWS. Telefonica recently disclosed that it has validated AWS Outposts as an effective platform for the deployment of a 5G standalone core, following trials using network functions from Mavenir, Nokia and Oracle. Prior to formalizing the AWS deal, Mavenir also worked with the Spanish incumbent in its domestic market on managed IoT connectivity using Mavenir’s packet core solution and AWS’s cloud infrastructure.
Taking it to the edge
Further evidence – if any were required – of the huge importance of working together in this space came earlier this month when Mavenir, MobiledgeX and Deutsche Telekom joined forces to create a cloud-native, 5G user plane function (UPF) to support multi-access edge computing (MEC) applications in different environments, including the operator’s own network, a private 4G/5G network, the roaming network or in the public cloud. For the trial the Mavenir 5G core is running in Deutsche Telekom’s network.
“This is a successful milestone for cloud-native 5G core traffic routing, giving Deutsche Telekom the freedom to deliver a point of interconnect/local breakouts anywhere in the world, on any cloud,” said Mavenir’s Pankajakshan. “Cloud-native design of 5G network functions integrated with orchestration tools makes it possible to achieve a new level of flexibility in network function placement,” he said. “Automation, agility, and flexibility are at the heart of this project.”
As indeed they are in most, if not all, cloud projects. But in order to realize those benefits, telcos need an ecosystem of partners working behind the scenes to stitch it all together.
