Dell Technologies and Orange have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on a distributed cloud architecture to prepare for opportunities presented by 5G.
Dell says that 5G will require a “new breed of platforms” to support near real-time edge computing and IoT services. The companies will collaborate on new distributed architectures for 5G using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), NFV (network functions virtualisation), SDN (software-defined networking), multi-access edge computing (MEC) and more.
A statement from Dell said: “These distributed architectures will provide a common hardware foundation of automated, agnostic software-defined infrastructure, extending from on-premise to the radio to the core, to accelerate innovation and service delivery.”
Specifically, the companies will collaborate on the definition and development of:
• Open source consortia and partnerships for the edge ecosystem
• Edge technology use cases, business models and proof of concepts
• Definition and validation of infrastructure accelerators, such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), graphics processing unit (GPUs), and network interface cards (SmartNICs), for edge workloads, including cloud and virtual RAN (CRAN/vRAN), MEC, and real-time, interactive, latency-sensitive applications
• AI/ML-enabled software to support remote automation of a multi-technology, heterogeneous edge built on virtual machines, containers and bare metal workloads
• Edge infrastructure platforms supporting telco environmental, space, operational and automation requirements.
“Orange entered this agreement with Dell Technologies to work jointly on a variety of topics revolving around edge computing and acceleration technologies that will be key to reach the full promise of 5G,” said Stéphane Demartis, VP, Orange, Corporate Cloud Infrastructure.
“We believe it’s essential to prepare the ecosystem for telco use cases while progressing in our knowledge of the future technologies.
“Orange expects from this partnership with Dell EMC not only technical but also business outcomes in order to fuel our strategy towards multi-access edge computing transformation.”
