Intel and Ericsson enter into a long-term partnership for the construction of a software composable infrastructure to support tomorrow’s 5G infrastructure.
The server infrastructure that will support 5G networks must be more flexible than ever. Telecom providers want to roll out new services quickly, and that requires a dynamic cloud environment. Ericsson and Intel are now joining forces to offer them.
To this end, the two parties are building on a synergy that already existed. With its SDI Manager software, Ericsson already has a platform in house to control software defined infrastructure. Intel, for its part, is the driving force behind the Rack Scale Design (RSD) standard for composable infrastructure. For RSD, Intel works with hardware partners who embrace a common standard.
Composable infrastructure
RSD is Intel’s name for software defined composable infrastructure. The approach is now familiar: hardware components such as storage, memory and compute are disconnected from each other, and re-combined by software to meet the requirements of specific workloads. This makes data centres very flexible. If you need more computing power, you can only buy that part and the hardware that is used to run a process is always precisely tailored.
With RSD, Intel allows customers to combine hardware from different vendors while still managing their entire software defined infrastructure from a single console. Ericsson and Intel are now going to combine the SDI Manager and the RSD management software, as they have essentially the same goal. Both pieces of software remain backwards compatible with older versions. With this partnership Ericsson wants to make it possible for its telecom customers to compose data centers in a flexible way with hardware from vendors of their choice.
Competitive advantages
The cooperation would thus provide more efficiency for the roll-out of network function virtualization, it sounds in a press release. It also simplifies the roll-out of additional services in the 5G margin, allowing operators to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Software defined infrastructure is not unique to the 5G sector. The cooperation therefore has consequences across the telecom sector. Further benefits of the cooperation between the two sides will therefore also be drawn to other sectors where they may be useful.
Related: From traditional servers to software composable infrastructure: what is the difference?
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.