The new partnership will accelerate 5G core and 5G SA MEC adoption, said Casa’s CEO
Editor’s note: Comments from Casa Systems CEO Jerry Guo were added after this article was posted.
5G network solutions provider Casa Systems said this week that it’s partnering with Google Cloud to develop new solutions around cloud-native 5G core, 5G Standalone (SA) Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) and enterprise mobile private networks. The deal also includes coordinated global sales, marketing, and support efforts, according to Casa Systems.
The companies describe the new partnership as “formalized” with this announcement, enabling Casa Systems to integrate Google Cloud into its software solutions and network functions. Casa Systems and Google Cloud also plan to develop new features and functionality unique to both businesses, with an eye towards “optimized ease-of-use and support for telecom and enterprise customers.”
For Casa CEO Jerry Guo, the focus of the Google Cloud partnership is to accelerate telco and enterprise adoption of his company’s cloud-native telecom and enterprise-focused products.
“We are delighted to formalize our partnership with Google Cloud and more quickly drive the adoption of our cloud-native 5G Core and 5G SA MEC solutions, as well as our other software solutions,” Guo said in a statement.
“We have been working on this for a couple of years to get to this point,” Casa Systems CEO Jerry Guo told RCR Wireless News.
“A lot of people are talking about running telco applications over a public cloud, working with hyperscalers. What’s different about this? I want to address this from two aspects: one is technical, the business. Technically, this a complete integration of cloud-native infrastructure functions over a public cloud. We are truly integrating all our 5G functions with Google Cloud infrastructure. We are basically working with Google to make sure everything we have is leveraging Google infrastructure,” Guo said.
This integration includes Google’s cluster management, automation, operations, data analytics and monitoring functionality, Guo said. On the business side, he added that Casa Systems will leverage Google’s considerable resources to expand its reach.
“We appreciate the help our partners bring to us, from a customer traction point of view,” he said. “It’s a very encompassing partnership, from sales, marketing, strategic direction and technical collaboration.”
Amol Phadke, Google Cloud’s managing director and GM for global telecom industry, called Casa Systems “a new leader in the cloud-native 5G market segment,” noting that Google’s collaboration goes back more than two years. Last year, Casa announced it had deployed its 5G SA core using Google Cloud’s public cloud infrastructure. The company organized a field test with Google Cloud’s ISV/SaaS Center of Excellence to deploy its 5G SA core in multiple locations, managing control plane and user plane functionality separately from locations hundreds of miles apart.
Also in 2021, Casa Systems expanded a partnership with Bell Canada to provide sub-6 GHz 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) customer-premises equipment (CPE). The business already provided Bell with 4G FWA CPE.
2022 has been a busy year for Casa Systems as well. In April, the company announced a multi-year deal with Verizon. Under the terms of the deal, Verizon supplies them with 5G core network functions but has also taken an investment interest in the firm: Verizon put about about $40 million into the business, taking an approximately 10% ownership stake in the Andover, Mass.-based business in the process. Then in June, Casa Systems announced a partnership with 5G core software developer Alepo to combine Casa Systems’s 5G core with Alepo’s subscriber data management (SDM) and converged policy control functions.
“It will give service providers and private enterprises the ability to deploy 4G, 5G, and fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband networks more rapidly and cost effectively,” said Casa Systems in a statement.
