On-prem and base stations as mini data centres are the future
Speaking at Dell Tech World in Las Vegas, Dell Technologies’ Founder, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell told a press and analysts, ““Open RAN isn’t a snap of the fingers and it’s a success,” according to a report by RCR Wireless.
Dell continued, “It’s going to take some time. But we are seeing almost every carrier, at some level, embrace virtualisation and sort of containerization of different parts of their network.”
His company has dedicated substantial resources to Open RAN, including its Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab (OTEL). In March it announced it would expand its facility in Texas and open another branch in Cork, Ireland, and it is increasing its range of products that are optimised for telecoms.
Reframing the context
Dell is seeking to reframe itself, products and ecosystem around on-premises IT, aka the edge, as operators strive to transform their own assets to cloud-native technologies and to monetise 5G by offering next-generation, cloud-based services to enterprise customers.
RCR also quoted Dell saying at the event, “As you come to understand the things we’re doing around the edge, I think those are intimately intertwined with the development of public and private 5G networks…the [carriers’] networks, are in the process of modernising and virtualising and containerising…and that’s moving infrastructure into a more industry standard-like architecture with some very specific requirements for telco.”
He claimed about 7 million base stations around world that in fact becoming small data centres needing new infrastructure, adding, “all our work on the edge ties to 5G.”