Orange uses embedded software to improve end-user experience on its ThousandEyes alliance

Orange partnered with US-based ThousandEyes, an Internet and cloud intelligence company, to deliver real time, end-to-end visibility on both its enterprise networks and the Open Transit Internet (OTI).

The ThousandEyes platform, combined with Orange expertise around data analytics, provides businesses and carriers with improved digital experiences delivered across the Internet to cloud service providers (CSPs), Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs). 

Using the ThousandEyes platform, Orange is now able to continuously monitor the performance of certified ISPs and their connection to the Orange Next-Gen Hubs, OTI points-of-presence globally, and all major cloud service providers and content providers. This allows Orange to deliver on the promise of the Internet of Enterprises and OTI by providing performance measurements over Internet in 60 countries, and will continue expanding coverage in the coming months.

Orange Business Services, the global enterprise division of the Orange Group, intends to power this partnership to provide its customers with leading-edge enterprise-grade managed Internet, multi-cloud connectivity and SD-WAN visibility services.

Orange has already deployed the ThousandEyes platform successfully with customers. This includes a German industrial manufacturer, who used it to determine the best cloud connectivity solution in China. 

During a performance assessment of Office 365 and Microsoft Azure connectivity, Orange compared direct connectivity via its Orange Business Services Next-Gen Hub to an alternative solution over Internet. The results were clear: Next-Gen Hub provided up to three times more bandwidth and with more reliability, thereby delivering the best experience for the customer’s users in China.

A key Orange Business Services objective is to accompany its customers around the world in their cloud and SD-WAN transformation journeys, and the ThousandEyes platform is a critical enabler to optimize the migration phases. It allows Orange to monitor quality of experience at both the application and network level, and speed up troubleshooting in case of Internet-related performance issues. 

Customers will be able to gain insight into the internal and external dependencies that impact the end-user experience.

Affirmed Networks now provides UnityCloud 5G Core offering on AWS environments

Affirmed Networks delivers UnityCloud 5G Core solution on AWS that allows Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to focus on delivering innovative services to their customers rather than on the operations of running a data center supporting a next-gen virtualized network.

Affirmed is now able to deliver effective, cloud-native 5GC network solution over the proven, robust AWS cloud services. As a result, operators can accelerate innovation and enhance their competitive advantage by delivering advanced services over a scalable 5G Core.

Affirmed UnityCloud is a web-scale, cloud-native 5G innovation platform that helps CSPs to quickly create and deploy new consumer, enterprise, and IoT services. With UnityCloud, operators can deploy new services in weeks versus months, which allows them to rapidly respond to market demands and compete more effectively. 

UnityCloud’s true microservice architecture enables automated fine-grained slicing so the solution can be tailored to the disparate needs of individual enterprises, applications, and use cases to support a wide range of new service offerings.

Affirmed UnityCloud improves network economics by converging ‘Any G,’ including 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and wireline core on to one unified core.  This eliminates the need for CSPs to maintain parallel legacy networks and allows them to quickly create and deploy new consumer, enterprise, and IoT services.

The 5G core running on a trusted hybrid cloud such as AWS represents an ideal solution for operators. By leveraging Affirmed UnityCloud on AWS unique hybrid cloud, CSPs can now easily orchestrate the control and user plane. 

This allows them to centralize control plane by placing its workload in the AWS regional cloud, and distributing user planes by moving user planes closer to the user at the network or enterprise edge via AWS Outposts. As a result, CSPs gain the best user experience with the highest performance, ultra-low latencies, and lowest possible TCO.

This approach provides CSPs with the flexibility to design and deploy hybrid clouds in a wide variety of on-prem or public cloud-based models.  As a result, CSPs can accelerate innovation by providing developers with the same infrastructure, services, and APIs that will support the service when it is delivered. 

This enables CSPs to build an application once, and deploy via the cloud or on-premises, significantly decreasing the amount of custom software required, increasing developer velocity; eliminate custom environments that must be deployed, operated, and monitored, reducing operational complexity and risk; and access a vast ecosystem of AWS developers allowing the development of new compelling applications that will help monetize 5G investments.

As such, CSPs are able to reap the benefits of digital transformation by focusing on their core competencies. Operators also benefit from AWS’ global reach that allows them to expand into new markets and geographies to drive revenue growth without increasing complexity.

Sunwave and Mavenir partner to expand ecosystem for enterprise OpenRAN environments

Mavenir and Sunwave announced Tuesday integration of Mavenir’s virtual RAN architecture with an Open digital interface into Sunwave’s CrossFire product portfolio and that first customer trials are now underway.

The companies will jointly or independently support OpenRAN deployments in the enterprise private LTE market and take end to end responsibility.

Existing Distributed Antenna System (DAS) deployments using the CrossFire platform can now be upgraded to support OpenRAN architectures and have an immediate path to 5G. The combination of Mavenir’s OpenRAN and enterprise communication portfolio together with Sunwave’s enterprise portfolio, provide the industry with a true OpenRAN production-proven platform supporting 4G/5G for enterprise and private LTE.

The evolved RAN architecture, designed with cloud-native virtualization techniques, enables the RAN to flex and adapt based on usage and coverage. This flexibility provides expanded and more convenient network location choices for the baseband processing. 

Therefore, this architecture naturally fits in existing networks’ backhaul infrastructure and is future-proof for evolution towards a fully virtualized and cloud RAN architecture. In addition, it offers a strategic differentiation by enabling the Remote Radio Units (RRUs) to interwork with the Virtualized Baseband Unit (vBBU) over a non-ideal fronthaul (i.e. ethernet), overcoming the traditional constraints of CPRI over fiber.

Conventional RAN platforms have been based on proprietary hardware and rely on long life-cycles in development, deployment, and operation. With each generation of radio interface change, these radios are typically replaced with the newer versions at a significant investment and inconvenience to the CSPs. 

Furthermore, radio infrastructures based on this approach are designed based on the peak capacity without granular power and interference management capabilities. This creates the vendor lock-in and the inability to keep pace with technology and demographic transitions.