World Wide Technology Provides Single-Hand-to-Shake Model for Disaggregated RAN Deployments 

With the transition to 5G networks, Communication Service Providers CSPs are focusing on improving energy efficiency and leveraging cloud-native virtualization and automation to deliver coverage and performance while keeping capex and opex contained. 

With these goals in mind, CSPs are looking into disaggregated Radio Access Network (RAN) solutions, and particularly Open RAN, that can consolidate network functions in private, public or hybrid cloud environments and open the door to different vendors that can innovate independently to provide performance and energy efficiency optimizations, as well as better price points. 

However, over the last couple of decades, many CSPs have externalized operation and planning services and have relied on one or two selected vendors to provide a fully integrated proprietary solution. It is no surprise that, when considering a disaggregated RAN solution, one of the main barriers to entry for CSPs is the lack of a single hand to shake, a single entity that takes the responsibility to integrate the entire ecosystem of RAN hardware and software components and deliver a roadmap for innovation and continuous enhancement during the full lifecycle of the solution. 

World Wide Technology (WWT) has accepted this challenge and together with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), VMware and Mavenir is leading an initiative to provide a clear path forward for CSPs to build successful disaggregated (virtual and/or open) RAN solutions and support it through its lifecycle. As explained in their recent blog post,  the partnership addresses key challenges by providing: 

• Clear responsibility for supporting an Open RAN — with a single hand to shake, a single point of contact, clear roles and responsibilities for every aspect of the solution, and a single-pane-of-glass for system management. 

• Clear responsibility for lifecycle management — with a continuous validation work performed by all the partners to ensure alignment of major and minor software releases and updates and ensure interoperability and continued operation of the Open RAN. 
• Results through the lifecycle of the solution that meet or exceed the industry standard. 

The partnership will help CSPs overcome legacy adoption challenges as well as accelerate innovation and drive adoption of disaggregated RAN technologies globally with: 

• Greater roadmap control for releasing new features/services 

• Reduced implementation time utilizing automated on-site provisioning and centralized pre-integration 
• Accelerated RAN innovation through programmability 
• Vendor diversification that helps to increase ARPU with faster innovation that address new revenue opportunities 

The unique joint offering enables a best-of-breed, verified and trusted stack for next generation distributed and disaggregated networks, according to Aniruddho Basu, EVP, Emerging Business, Partnerships and Channels, Mavenir.  

The collaboration will foster innovation, accelerate a seamless flow of development, deployment, and management of new network capabilities, and enable unique services that the feature release model of traditional RAN cannot enable. The tight integration of HPE hardware, VMware virtualization layer, and Mavenir Open RAN application layer, coordinated by WWT, creates a joint solution that is performant, trusted, and secure but also more innovative, agile, and flexible. 

Aniruddho Basu, EVP, Emerging Business, Partnerships and Channels, Mavenir

For more information on open disaggregated networks, visit Mavenir’s Open vRAN, OpenBeam^® and Converged Packet Core pages.