When a trillion-dollar global business that provides critical services on which the world relies undergoes massive change, it’s worth sitting up and taking notice. That is why the MWC gathering in Barcelona, formerly known as Mobile World Congress, at the end of this month will be an event worth watching.

TheCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, will be on the ground in Barcelona for coverage of this year’s MWC, Feb. 27 through March 2. Viewers will hear firsthand from analysts, practitioners and cloud luminaries on emerging models that are taking shape as telcos seek more programmable architectures in today’s growing cloud ecosystem.

The telecommunications sector has entered a period of dramatic change, one in which the underlying infrastructure powering the world’s largest telco networks is going through a new phase of modernization. Telcos are opening up and becoming more cloudlike through adoption of software-defined tools and cloud-native microservices for developers.

If this scenario sounds familiar, it’s because it resembles the same transformation that has engulfed the IT world over the past decade.

“We’ve seen this movie before; this has happened in the IT data center,” said Dennis Hoffman (pictured, left), senior vice president and general manager of the telecom business for Dell Technologies Inc. “We went from proprietary vertical solutions to horizontal open systems. We went from client server to software-defined, open hardware and cloud-native. The trend is likely to be exactly that in the telecom industry because that’s what the operators want.”

Hoffman spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante in advance of MWC, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE. He was joined by Aaron Chaisson (right), vice president of telecom and edge solutions marketing at Dell, and they discussed the latest trends in the telecommunications field and what to expect during theCUBE’s extensive coverage of MWC in Barcelona. (* Disclosure below.)

Targeting the edge

This year’s MWC will provide an opportunity to assess where the telco industry stands relative to several important enterprise trends. Prominent among these is a move toward edge computing.

In a previous interview on theCUBE, Hoffman said that 75% of data will be created at the edge over the next decade. For Dell and its partners, this represents an important market that will be driven by a continued push into 5G deployment and initiatives built around data processing at the edge.

One example of industry collaboration in this regard is Dell’s partnership with Korea’s SK Telecom Co. Ltd. to remove the complex network path between devices and the host location for data. Through an initiative called OneBox MEC, Dell’s PowerEdge servers will provide high-performance, low-latency services at the edge.

“This industry has been defined by the inability to stop investing and the difficulty to monetize that investment,” Hoffman said. “Everybody’s looking at 5G, 5G plus, 6G and beyond as the opportunity to go get a chunk of that revenue and enterprise edge is the target.”

Embracing the telco cloud

A key ingredient in the transformation of the telecommunications industry is its evolution to a software-defined, resilient cloud infrastructure that allows telcos to add new services and respond rapidly when customer needs or technologies change. This evolution to a telco cloud has been a central focus for Dell and other firms working closely with telecommunications providers.

“One of the hot topics in the industry now is telco cloud and what that is going to look like going forward,” Chaisson said. “It’s going to be combination of services telco firms offer and services that they leverage. It’s going to help them modernize how they deliver telecommunications services to their customers and provide value-added services on top of that.”

Last year, Dell announced a new telco infrastructure platform designed to simplify deployment of cloud-native networks within the telecommunication industry. The company unveiled pre-packaged Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks, co-engineered with Wind River Systems Inc. and custom-built for telecommunications workloads. Deployment of these new blocks will facilitate cloud-native network automation.

“We announced our Infra Blocks program in partnering with virtualization providers to provide engineered systems that dramatically simplify how customers can deploy and manage, through Day 2 operations, an entire cloud environment,” Chaisson said. “They can deploy the right virtualization layer at the right part of their network to support the applications they are looking to drive.”

Major industry event

TheCUBE’s coverage of MWC from February 27 through March 2 will include analysis of keynote remarks delivered by top executives from major telecommunications providers, such as Orange, Telefonica, Ericsson and China Mobile, along with exclusive interviews.

Guests on theCUBE will include David Trigg, global vice president of the telecom systems business at Dell; Deania Davidson, director of edge servers product planning and management at Dell; Scott Walker, vice president of the global telco ecosystem and Americas CSPs at Wind River Systems Inc.; Honoré LaBourdette, VP of global partner ecosystem sales at Red Hat; and Zeus Keravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research, among many others.

“MWC is a massive event for the industry every year,” Chaisson said. “We’re going to be highlighting 13 different solutions to show our customers what we’re doing today. On theCUBE, you’re going to be hearing our executives, our partners and our customers talk about what Dell is doing to innovate in the industry and how we’re looking to leverage the broader, open ecosystem.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the MWC event:

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of MWC Feb. 27-Mar. 2. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of MWC, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

Check out the complete list of expert guests who will appear on theCUBE during MWC.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for MWC. Neither Dell, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE