IBM telco network cloud ecosystem: Modernizing networks for the 5G era

The speeds, increased capacity and reliability offered by 5G will make way for a new generation of applications, such as multimedia telemedicine, distance learning and autonomous vehicles delivered from the telco edge – all while boosting performance to existing services.

Communication service providers (CSPs), in turn, will be critical in delivering these digital services and innovations. And research suggests that they’ll need to act quickly as 5G becomes more available. In fact, our studies indicate that 77% of early adopting consumers would opt for 5G, when available, if it resulted in a superior mobile video quality experience.

As we advance into the world of 5G, providers will need to transform their networks into hybrid multicloud platforms that can support large volumes of data and that can rapidly adapt to new challenges.

A new avenue

IBM recognizes that providers are looking for more choices that offer greater service agility and that help drive down costs as they implement core network functions, virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN), security and Business & Operations Support Systems (BSS/OSS). To address CSP’s need for choice, we created a telco network cloud ecosystem community that allows providers to accelerate their service development using multi-vendor network functions that support Management and Orchestration (MANO) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)-compliant architectures.  In this new ecosystem, we are bringing together a set of innovative ecosystem providers across the telecommunications industry that offer a breadth of 5G network functionality that CSPs can adopt immediately.

These certified network functions work with IBM’s lifecycle management, orchestration and service assurance capabilities, such as the IBM Telco Network Cloud Manager, and can be deployed on industry leading Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack infrastructures. Further, IBM has invested in a dedicated ecosystem lab to work with CSP’s as they certify their network functions for interoperability and operational readiness for IBM, Red Hat and other provider products.

A promising start

We are pleased to introduce these participants, among others, in IBM’s telco network ecosystem:

ADVA

Together with IBM’s lifecycle management and orchestration capabilities, ADVA’s Ensemble virtualization suite is designed to deliver open, vendor neutral networking. ADVAis introducing a universal Customer Premises Equipment (uCPE) approach to edge computing, where service providers can select from a broad set of white box servers for hosting virtual network functions or end-user applications. This collaboration creates a certified set of components for uCPE solutions that can be deployed on a well-defined, virtualized or containerized platform together with IBM’s automation, orchestration and service assurance capabilities.

Altiostar

Altiostar is integrating its market-leading, open RAN virtualization solution with IBM’s orchestration and service assurance offerings, designed to enable CSPs to deploy multi-vendor cloud native mobile networks that cut costs and promote agility and automation. This solution will help users introduce new cloud concepts into mobile networks and empower operators to have a web-scale, software-defined network that can support different applications and services for 5G.

F5 Networks

IBM and F5 Networks are combining their strengths to enable hybrid cloud environments. F5’s application services and infrastructures are designed to support CSPs to cost-effectively create, operate and maintain a robust hybrid telco network cloud built on IBM’s modern containerized and virtualized platform. This collaboration will help CSPs to create an open, secure, multi-access, multi-service network cloud with F5’s security and data traffic management portfolio for virtualization, edge and transition to 5G.

Juniper Networks

Joining the IBM telco network ecosystem has let Juniper Networks empower CSPs to create a truly multi-vendor network service environment. The company’s Contrail Cloud — a platform for building automated, service-ready telco clouds — integrates with IBM Agile Lifecycle Manager to let users dynamically adapt and geographically distribute capabilities based on performance and requirements. The solution includes an analytics engine that monitors the health and performance of virtualized networks and seamlessly integrates existing physical network elements with virtualized network elements, including Juniper’s vSRX firewall and vMX router.

Metaswitch

Together, IBM and Metaswitch enable CSPs to build one of the most modern 5G networks with the lowest TCO. Built around Metaswitch’s Fusion Core, a fully containerized high-performance 5G core, we are the first to deliver the benefits of container-based orchestration and automation in the smallest footprint, which can scale all the way from private enterprise offering to large scale Tier I carrier deployments.

As 5G becomes more of an every-day reality, CSPs will more often be looking for validated configurations and solution blueprints that they can use to deploy technology with confidence. And IBM’s telco network cloud ecosystem community will be there to bring together the certified functionality that CSPs will need to modernize their networks and unlock the potential of 5G. We encourage you to find out more on how IBM is collaborating with CSPs to accelerate network transformation.

Solving Business Problems with VDI

Typically, erthe customer evaluation of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its deployment is based on costs (TCO) and returns (ROI).  These two factors are of course important, but there are other important elements that VDI can improve upon – which should also be considered.  Some of these include productivity, planning, and customer and worker satisfaction.

Let’s explore just a few of the difficulties that VDI can solve and simplify, shall we?

Planning and decision making

To be successful, businesses should always be looking at the big picture in terms of decision making.  Having a well defined cost-per-user based on their profile simplifies the desktop and per-user licensing costs well ahead of budget time.  While the up-front cost of a VDI implementation might seem difficult to justify within the current paradigm, companies find that the benefits and long term savings in time and money, as well as the tremendous benefits in agility and productivity, quickly outweigh the initial investment.

Deploying new hardware is simple, since the user’s desktop and applications are already configured in the VDI solution.  Agility is critical in the modern landscape, giving those who can quickly ramp up resources and deploy new workers a competitive advantage.  VDI gives organizations that end-user volume control in order to predictably address growth spurts, hardware refresh, break-fix, and support costs.

Mobility with control
Remote workers, flexible workers, contractors, traveling consultants, and offshore resources represent the growing employee elements in our workforce.  With that workforce no longer near the data source or the traditional data center, VDI supports diversity in both location and device – all while retaining access control, legal licensing, backup, and up-to-date security features.  Employee restrictions or inclusions can quickly be altered from a central location as workers contribute to a project, complete a project, or are terminated.


Reducing system down time

Cringe-worthy words every manager has heard: “My laptop won’t boot”, “my laptop crashed”, “I dropped my laptop”, and “my laptop has been stolen”.  Requiring quick action both to secure your corporate data and continue the productivity of that expensive human resource, VDI enables companies to quickly return that resource to action, secure the users’ work environment, and have logged proof that no malicious entity has access to the critical corporate data.

For those in aforementioned mobile workforce (sales, onsite consultants, etc.), acquisition or overnighting a new device is immeasurably quicker than configuring, loading, testing, and shipping a new device.  When the hardware lifecycle is over and planning for a hardware refresh has turned into an action, VDI ensures that new device deployment (whether by date or by function) will be a breeze.  While most organizations don’t specifically measure lost productivity due to desktop support, we all have stories.  We also can agree that every hour lost is expensive both internally and to our customers.

Security
The security landscape is daunting, with elements of encryption, firewalls, antivirus, antispyware, backups, and intrusion prevention.  Addressing data security and staying ahead of the malevolent folks in our society is a full time job, requiring added resources and costs to each end-user deployment.  For many companies traversing this landscape, making the right decisions on what counter measures to deploy and continually keeping up with the best-in-breed technologies of data security is nearly impossible.

Instead of hoping you’ve gotten it right, evaluate instead the end-to-end security components of the VDI provider who keeps your environment and your business safe from the latest threats.


Monitoring and maintenance
Similarly to security issues, monitoring and maintenance are a continual, often neglected and difficult to deploy, necessity in the IT community.  Upgrades and patches require monitoring of each of your software vendors’ patch notifications and sites, as well as patches of the operating environment.

Monitoring all the various versions and configurations requires significant effort and diligence.  Utilizing VDI, upgrades to desktop operating environments, and licensed applications can be done quickly and without user interruption.

Monitoring is the preventative maintenance item often overlooked, or is a victim of support issues adding strain to an already stressed IT department.  Having a vendor continuously monitor your environment to find and solve issues before they become business interrupting problems is a must.

Audit trail and activity reporting
Increasingly, there are legal, financial, and industry related requirements for record-keeping and documented proof of corporate data.  In those regulation-heavy spaces (health care, finance, military, and government), one challenge may be ensuring reliable audits of secure, highly available data to both internal and regulatory agents.  The best VDI solutions have integrated and automated activity and record-keeping as needed.


Testing and application roll-out
As your newly freed up resources are working on strategic applications and data, VDI presents multiple user profiles that can be quickly setup for development and testing. This can be done by logging the activity as mentioned above, then torn down – freeing up licenses without interrupting your IT help desk each time you need to test before any user roll-out and go-live events.

Support

Your VDI vendor is your best source of desktop support. They know your user profiles, software applications, licenses, interfaces, and all of the security and patch information in a controlled environment.  Such an environment allows you to confidently shift the burdens of desktop support to responsible experts working under an established service level agreement.



Properly deployed VDI can solve many business challenges, and we’ve only scratched the surface.  When the fundamentals of the desktop have become a reliable tool instead of a costly liability, one is free to focus resources on your core business – giving your workforce reliable tools so they can produce, create, and improve their daily responsibilities.