TCS will host its Cognitive Network Operations Platforms on Wind River Studio, said a TCS VP
Wind River announced this week a collaboration with Tata Consulting Services (TCS), the IT services consulting business of Indian multinational Tata. The two companies will work together to create a full-stack Virtual Radio Access Network (vRAN) solution for 4G and 5G networks, Wind River said. TCS will manage deployment and engineering, using Wind River Studio as the cloud platform.
In a statement, TCS VP and head of Network Solutions and Services Vimal Kumar explained that this announcement pulls together Wind River Studio with TCS’ Cognitive Network Operations Platform (CNOPS).
“Our Cognitive Network Operations platform hosted on Wind River Studio will help telecom network operators leverage AI and ML to monitor network health, predict possible failures, architect a customer-centric network experience, and maintain exceptional service quality,” said Kumar.
TCS describes CNOPS as a turnkey solution for Communication Service Providers (CSPs), to enable analytics-driven network operations using AI and ML, based around zero-touch networking principles. Key features include a single view of the network with correlated alarm display and service view; fault and performance prediction; heuristic data analysis gathering performance data across network functions including access, transport, core and application, and power; auto-ticketing of network faults; and multi-tenancy support. Studio presents operators with a cloud-native, Kubernetes-friendly container architecture to develop and manage edge networks at scale.
“Together with TCS, we can deliver agile, secure, reliable, and ultra-low latency solutions to support new use cases in a world that places increasing importance on the cloud, the edge, and greater intelligence,” said Rajeev Rawal, Wind River’s head of country sales for India.
Wind River’s partnerships with companies to expand Studio’s use in vRAN efforts include Verizon and Vodafone, among others. Wind River announced in February that Japanese carrier KDDI is using the platform for its O-RAN-compliant 5G Standalone (SA) virtualized base station technology. Finnish telco Elisa partnered with the company in February to build a fully automated 5G far edge cloud. The initial scope of the deployment supported a fully containerized 5G user plane function (UPF) from Elisa’s current 5G core vendor, Ericsson. The companies then planned to conduct edge cloud technology assessments. They will include use cases like Open RAN, which demands real-time processing at the far edge of the network.
Dell Technologies announced a partnership with Wind River in September to deliver Telecom Infrastructure Blocks. The companies promise CSPs simplified telco cloud network deployment and management features using the new products, which combining validated and pre-packaged hardware and software developed specifically for telecom workload requirements and use cases. They will be available starting in November.
The vCU/vDU infrastructure block comprises Dell’s Poweredge XR11 server pre-configured with a third-gen Intel Xeon processor, RAM, Solid-State Drives (SSDs) and two quad-port 10/25 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) interfaces. Dell also includes detailed design guidance to configure the blocks to support vRAN and Open RAN systems, spanning from 8 to 15 radios across different frequency ranges and operating bandwidths.
Dell will also offer two different types of Site Controller Infrastructure Blocks: Worker Nodes and Controller Nodes. Each Site Controller requires one Worker Node, and two Controller Nodes. Site Controller Infrastructure Blocks are based on Dell PowerEdge R750 servers, and come equipped with Wind River Studio Cloud Platform, Wind River Studio Conductor and Wind River Studio Analytics installed from the factory.
