VMware Upgrades it Telecom Cloud
The version 4.0 release suggests that the company continues to put telecom as top priority
Ever since Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware, we’ve kept our eyes on how the two companies would plan their joint moves into the future. There were concerns around VMware’s customers and their response to new regulations. However, when it comes to the cloud platform for telecom, it appears that Broadcom is totally in sync.
And so it was when VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform saw the rollout of deployment and feature updates as part of the 4.0 release. It includes the Telco Cloud platform’s move to a two-tiered offering that is called “Essentials” and “Advanced”. This is quite clearly Broadcom’s way of creating value addition – Hock Tan’s fingerprints are all over it!
What do these two services bring?
The Essentials offers the basic package with fundamental automation capabilities such as registration for pre-deployed clouds as virtualized infrastructure, container-as-a-service management for Kubernetes clusters, a dynamic infrastructure policy integrator, automation of the infrastructure, network function automations, role-based access control, multi-tenancy and API integration among other things.
The Advanced package brings multi-cloud support, network function automation for VNFs, container network functions (CNFs), lifecycle management, dynamic infrastructure policies and third-party virtualized network function (VNF) management support; network service automation; network slicing; and GitOps support for lifecycle management of cloud-native applications.
Feature updates aplenty in the 4.0 release
Feature updates also include the latest versions of VMware’s vSphere, NSX, vSAN, Tanzu and Cloud Director products. Legacy support also gets an update as older versions of Kubernetes are now supported. Additionally, there are new security features that prevent network function deployments into a Kubernetes system namespace. Granular security defaults are also available at the user namespace levels instead of a system-wide presence.
The Telco Cloud Platform 4.0 will continue to support VMware’s vendor partner ecosystem through its Ready for Telco Cloud program which means it provides a list of pre-certified VNFs and CNFs from vendors that an operator customer can quickly upload into the Telco Cloud Platform. Quite a time saver effort this!
There is also a RAN iteration that is designed as a horizontal platform to support virtualized baseband functions or virtualized distributed units (vDUs) and virtualized central units (vCUs) from different pre-certified vendors. The update also provides new fallback support for precision time protocol to increase resiliency.
In addition, there are CaaS updates to support single-node Kubernetes clusters on VMware’s ESXi bare metal hypervisor; CPU virtualization updates to provide direct control over vRAN workloads to manage power consumption; a smaller footprint to allow the RAN platform to better operate in resource-constrained edge environments; and a technical preview for support of Intel’s 4th-generation Xeon processors.
As mentioned earlier, these updates are significant from the point of view that Broadcom has totally bought into VMware’s growing telecom expertise and aspirations. CEO Hock Tan had stated in the past that VMware under his charge would focus on monetizing the flagship Cloud Platform and vSphere products. However, given their foothold in the telecom space, it appears as if Hock Tan can spot a golden goose in the vicinity.
