Red Hat has announced a global collaboration with Fujitsu to deliver a virtualised radio access network (vRAN) solution on Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes. Fujitsu has chosen Red Hat OpenShift as its preferred hybrid cloud platform to deliver a cloud-native, AI-ready vRAN solution, intended to help service providers achieve improved efficiency and network optimisation as well as expand operations to diverse applications with greater consistency and flexibility.
Honoré LaBourdette, vice president, Global Telco Ecosystem, Red Hat said, “The future of RAN is AI, and it is powered by cloud-native technologies. With this collaboration, Red Hat and Fujitsu are helping service providers realise the full potential of RAN, encompassing virtualised, containerised and AI workloads across sprawling network footprints, to achieve new levels of enhanced network performance and optimisation.”
With this collaboration, Red Hat OpenShift will be the backbone for Fujitsu’s O-RAN O-Cloud based solution, a cloud-native platform to support virtualised and containerised open RAN functions, supporting software components and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads for RAN. Deploying and operating RAN at scale, often covering thousands of sites within a service provider’s network, requires enhanced automation, flexibility and security capabilities. With Red Hat OpenShift as the common platform for Fujitsu’s vRAN solution, customers can gain:
- Advanced orchestration and automation – Red Hat OpenShift enables zero-touch provisioning and offers built-in automation to help service providers manage next-generation RAN networks at any scale on a common platform.
- Ultra low latency and improved performance – Fujitsu vRAN on Red Hat OpenShift and running on ARM servers provide a more power-efficient alternative for service providers to achieve lower latency, deterministic processing and dedicated hardware acceleration for enhanced network performance.
- AI-ready vRAN – Red Hat OpenShift empowers service providers to unlock new revenue opportunities by scaling with enhanced security capabilities and managing both virtualised, cloud-native and AI-enabled applications on a single, unified platform.
Masaki Taniguchi, Head of Mobile System Business Unit, Fujitsu Limited added, “We are pleased to extend our longstanding collaboration with Red Hat to deepen and broaden RAN capabilities for service providers in today’s AI era. Red Hat OpenShift offers an open, highly scalable cloud-native platform to deliver critical flexibility and integration for RAN, enabling service providers to meet rising network demands with greater ease and efficiency.”
Utilising Red Hat OpenShift as a common cloud platform, service providers can achieve up to a 40% reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) by realising improved resource sharing, productivity and automation implementation. Fujitsu vRAN on Red Hat OpenShift aligns with open compute standards set by the O-RAN Alliance for RAN and O-Cloud architecture to deliver an integrated solution driven by an open source innovation and community-driven contributions.
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