Kaloom partners with Enea to support advanced network slicing in 5G cloud data centers

Stockholm, Sweden: Kaloom will embed Enea’s Qosmos ixEngine® in its cloud-native 5G User Plane Function (UPF) product, which is a fully programmable and automated cloud-native networking solution for 5G Cloud Edge, Hybrid 4G/5G, and 5G Packet Core deployments.

Enea’s Qosmos ixEngine provides the application awareness needed for effective 5G slicing and contributes to the high performance and cost-efficiency of Kaloom’s 5G UPF.

In 5G, the UPF is responsible for traffic orchestration, and is a key enabler of multi-access edge computing (MEC) as the UPF can be deployed in regional and local cloud data centers as well as 5G core data centers, bringing users and technology resources closer together. This MEC proximity advantage is brought to life through network slicing, which dynamically assembles connectivity and computing resources across a shared, distributed 5G network infrastructure based on the unique application requirements of each traffic flow. Together, MEC and slicing form the foundation for bringing new high-throughput, low latency, ultra-reliable 5G applications to market.

Designed to provide telecom operators and cloud service providers with a rapid and cost-effective solution for supporting new 5G applications, the Kaloom 5G UPF features a native network slicing capability that offers full multi-tenant isolation down to hardware level. It is also an open solution that runs on networking white boxes and commodity hardware. The result is a 5G application acceleration offer that delivers superior performance, flexibility and security—with a 10x reduced TCO.

To support superior, fine-grained network slicing with zero performance impact on the UPF, Kaloom decided to spin out the UPF application identification upon which 5G slicing depends as an independent function, and to entrust it to the very best traffic classification technology on the market: the Enea Qosmos ixEngine.

Paul Parker-Johnson, Chief Analyst at ACG Research says “network-based edge computing offers telecom operators a tremendous opportunity to generate revenue from new 5G applications and services. Capitalizing on this opportunity will require competency in the cloud-native, service-based architectures that the 5G era demands, along with accurate and ultra-performant application identification to support advanced network slicing and delivery on multi-faceted SLAs. Kaloom and Enea’s solution offers operators a fast-path to acquiring these competencies and transforming multi-access edge computing from a strategic plan to a revenue-generating line of business.”

Suresh Krishnan, Chief Technology Officer at Kaloom states “We looked at different commercial traffic classification software, and Qosmos ixEngine offered the broadest and most accurate protocol coverage, including Cloud/SaaS, M2M, and IoT signatures. It is able to classify encrypted traffic and outperformed other solutions in identifying applications from the first packet in a flow. Finally, it was important to have ixEngine available as a containerized network function (CNF), since cloud-native architectures are essential for emerging 5G applications like virtual reality, industrial robotics, interactive gaming and remote medicine.”

Jean-Philippe Lion, Senior Vice President of the Enterprise Business Unit at Enea says “With the shift to cloud, remote work, and IoT, routing all connections through a central corporate data center does not make sense. It is crucial to bring resources closer to users to serve current business and consumer needs as well emerging 5G use cases like massive IoT, critical IoT and mobile broadband. That’s why networking and security are moving to distributed edge clouds, improving agility, performance and scalability. Kaloom is a prime enabler of this critical transition, and we are pleased to join them on this exciting 5G journey.”