To support the massive growth of data expected from 5G applications and services, CSPs are moving compute infrastructure to the edge and looking to integrate a broad ecosystem of software vendors to capture new revenue opportunities. New technologies like Open RAN (ORAN) are giving CSPs a broader set of options for deploying network infrastructure to support future growth. However, this trend is leading to a large, geographically distributed, open compute deployment that can be difficult to deploy and manage.

“As server technology proliferates through increasingly open telecom networks, the industry sees an immediate and growing need for remote lifecycle management of a highly distributed compute fabric,” said Dennis Hoffman, senior vice president and general manager, Dell Technologies Telecom Systems Business. “Bare Metal Orchestrator gives communication services providers an easier way to deploy and manage open network infrastructure while saving costs and time, allowing them to focus on delivering new and differentiated services to their customers.”

New Dell Technologies software modernizes network deployment and management

Dell Technologies Bare Metal Orchestrator telecom software offers the breadth and scale to automate the deployment and management of hundreds of thousands of servers across geographic locations to support ORAN and 5G deployments. The company’s first software to come from its Project Metalweaver initiative, Bare Metal Orchestrator gives CSPs the tools to discover and inventory servers, bring them online and deploy software, regardless of where they reside in the network. With declarative automation, Bare Metal Orchestrator tells the targeted server what to do, so that tasks and workflows – such as deploying software stacks and workloads – can be completed quickly and efficiently without human intervention. The software combines open standards technology with Dell Technologies intellectual property.

With Bare Metal Orchestrator, CSPs can eliminate days or weeks of configuration and provisioning to bring network hardware into a workload-ready state. This reduces the time it takes for an open network to deliver differentiated, profitable services at scale. Over time, the software can reduce operational costs by orchestrating server lifecycle management and minimizing errors and reliance on IT expertise. ACG Research estimates an up to 57% OpEx savings for CSPs deploying Bare Metal Orchestrator in their networks.1

“As we prepare for the future of 5G mobility and edge, we at T-Mobile have been closely collaborating with Dell Technologies to develop a product that allows engineers to drastically reduce the time spent managing thousands of servers across hundreds of sites,” said Quaid Campbell, director, network engineering cloud services, T-Mobile. “Solutions like Bare Metal Orchestrator allow us to focus on building out new strategic services, automating server provisioning and management tasks to software systems instead of engineers.”

“The industry is making progress toward Open RAN networks, but network operators are challenged with how to operate them cost-effectively at massive scale,” said Caroline Chappell, research director, Analysys Mason. “To keep pace with innovation, telecom operators require more agile ways to deploy and manage their network infrastructure. Bare metal orchestrators, such as Dell Technologies’ software, will be key to the flexible and efficient automation of the heterogeneous bare metal environments operators tell us they need to underpin cloud-native open RAN functions.”

New telecom solutions simplify network deployments, deliver better experiences

Dell Technologies continues to expand its open partner ecosystem by introducing new telecom solutions, reference architectures and services to accelerate ORAN and edge deployments while providing CSPs more network support: 

• Dell Technologies Validated Solution for Mavenir Open vRAN and VMware Telco Cloud Platform brings together many industry-leading RAN partners within a validated solution of hardware and software, helping CSPs accelerate their transformation to ORAN technologies with pre-tested multi-vendor solutions.
• Dell Technologies Reference Architecture for Wind River Studio can streamline and reduce the cost of deploying a cloud-native, edge network while improving network performance.
• Dell Technologies Respond and Restore for Telecom service provides customers with support service level agreements to help maximize network uptime, limit network disruptions and maintain business continuity. Organizations have 24-hour access to designated Dell Technologies experts for complete support of the Dell Technologies infrastructure running their network, along with a full set of proactive, predictive and reactive capabilities.

Dell Technologies is in a unique position to help CSPs transform. The company is backed by industry leading IT infrastructure; secure, global supply chain; and, IT services with more than 60,000 dedicated professionals and partners in more than 170 countries. Through Dell Financial Services, CSPs can choose flexible payment solutions for the products and services they need to transform or build their networks.2

Additional quotes

“Open RAN is now moving from the trial phase to full commercial deployment as a cloud-native solution and is supported in Dell Technologies’ reference architecture,” said John Baker, senior vice president, business development, Mavenir. “Open RAN brings ease of deployment, the ability to orchestrate rapid architecture modifications and deploy zero-touch provisioning simplifying turnup and performance optimization.”

“Communications service providers have a tremendous opportunity in front of them to modernize their networks – from core to edge to RAN – and monetize 5G services. Building out an infrastructure that can support and scale edge-native apps will require collaboration between leading technology providers across the ecosystem. VMware and Dell Technologies plan to continue partnering in this area to help our mutual customers win in the new edge reality,” said Stephen Spellicy, vice president of product marketing and business development, Service Provider and Edge, VMware.

“As we move towards an intelligent systems world, the next generation of 5G services will require a cloud-native, carrier grade infrastructure to support innovative edge applications,” said Paul Miller, chief technology officer, Wind River. “Wind River Studio enables communication service providers to solve their mission critical systems needs with a modernized approach. By working closely with Dell Technologies, we deliver validated reference architectures for 5G vRAN, Open RAN and other use cases to help service providers quickly and reliably deploy new services with industry leading total cost of ownership.”

Availability

• Dell Technologies Bare Metal Orchestrator will be available globally in November 2021.
• Dell Technologies Validated Solution for Mavenir Open vRAN and VMware Telco Cloud Platform will be globally available in early 2022.
• Dell Technologies Reference Architecture for Wind River Studio is available globally today.
• Dell Technologies Respond and Restore for Telecom is available globally today.