Ericsson and Cisco Systems have won a deal transform and virtualise Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA)’s networks so the communications service provider can prepare for new emerging services and to evolve its core network to increase the level of agility and programmability from network slicing.
Through simplification of its network and infrastructure, VHA will benefit from having the tools to become more agile, innovative and more proactive in the way services are brought to market, ultimately resulting in improved customer engagement experience alongside reductions in opex and capex spend, the vendors claim.
The deal represents the first major collaboration between Ericsson and Cisco on telecoms cloud infrastructure.
“Ericsson and Cisco are our existing providers of core and routing functions making them good partners to move into a virtualised environment,” said Kevin Millroy, the chief technology officer of VHA. “This transformation allows us to introduce new applications to drive innovation and improve customer services and user experience. The new infrastructure opens the door to new business models and markets, such as Internet of Things for Vodafone – we are excited about the future prospects this partnership offers.”
Rima Qureshi, the head of Region North America at Ericsson, who is responsible for the strategic partnership with Cisco added: “This major transformation deal clearly demonstrates Ericsson’s global end-to-end transformation and operations capabilities as a trusted transformation partner. As the first collaboration between Ericsson and Cisco on telecoms cloud infrastructure, it also shows how our global partnership is speeding digital transformation for customers across industries.
“As the Prime Integrator, Ericsson is taking responsibility for integration of the Ericsson and Cisco, not only building the infrastructure, but ensuring the delivery of an end-to-end operational system.”
The joint architecture comprises Ericsson Hyperscale Datacenter System and software components, including the Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment, Ericsson Cloud Manager, Cloud SDN controller, together with the Cisco WAN Automation Engine, Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO), Cisco IP Network virtual network functions (VNFs) including IOS XR 9000v and Cloud Services Router 1000v, and both virtualised and physical security technologies such as the Adaptive Security Appliance and Cisco Firepower security gateway, along with services and support. This builds on VHA’s selection, in 2014, of Ericsson to replace and upgrade its complete core network, including virtual EPC and virtual IMS/ Voice over LTE.
