Dell has expanded its NFV portfolio by announcing partnerships with software vendor Red Hat and distributor Calsoft Labs.
The vendor said it would launch products this year based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform to support operators’ transition to NFV and SDN.
This is a second deal between both the companies in recent months, the vendor and the manufacturer signed an agreement in December last year to jointly develop enterprise-grade, private cloud solutions based on Red Hat’s OpenStack platform.
Dell said the partnership would help enterprise customers in deploying highly-scalable cloud computing models.
“Expanding our co-engineering agreement with Dell to also focus on the telecommunications industry was an obvious next step to better serve telcos and fully utilise both the strengths of Red Hat and Dell,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, Virtualization and OpenStack, Red Hat.
Meanwhile, its partnership with Calsoft Labs will allow the software vendor to act as a value-added reseller and systems integrator on behalf of Dell.
The distributor will deliver NFV and SDN solutions that include the latest Dell OEM products. In addition, both companies will offer complete NFV solutions comprising hardware, software and systems.
Dell also unveiled its new server and storage products, which it said are specifically customised for telco customers.
These include the Dell PowerEdge R420xr server, a two-socket server repackaged to work in harsh weather conditions and the PowerVault MD3400, MD3800 and MD3960 families, which are a part of its entry-level storage arrays and expansion enclosures.
Dell faces some tough competition in the NFV market. Alcatel-Lucent already announced its own plans to work with Red Hat on NFV, while last week HP announced its new NFV business.