Broadcom Inc.’s VMware subsidiary is rolling out new features across its 5G, software-defined wide-area network, secure access service edge and edge computing products today that are aimed at helping communications service providers modernize their networks and create new services.

They include a SASE suite co-developed with Broadcom subsidiary Symantec Inc. and oriented toward the distributed edge.

VMware said it’s addressing three layers of the software-defined edge: the edge compute stack that hosts applications and workloads, an intelligent overlay for connectivity and security services running across the WAN and a network layer that handles connectivity across fixed and 5G networks. The company claims to run more than 7 million edge workloads across 600,000 enterprise branches connected with VMware SD-WAN software and to have 20,000 sites running Open RAN, a reference architecture for a set of interoperable hardware, software and interfaces that can be built from off-the-shelf hardware. A RAN is the part of a telecommunications system that connects individual devices, like mobile phones or computers, to other parts of a network over radio signals.

“We’re tailoring the telco cloud platform to meet the needs of diverse RAN deployment,” said Padma Sudarsan, chief architect of the software-defined edge at VMware. That includes supporting the Kubernetes orchestrator for software containers and stretched clusters, a model configuring a single computational cluster over multiple geographically dispersed sites or data centers.

“Edge locations are increasingly distributed and can’t necessarily be constantly connected,” Sudarsan said, “so our approach is pull-based instead of push-based so these environments can come online without significant IT provisioning. It’s essential to have programmability across the vertical and horizontal stack.”

Single-vendor SASE

VMware VeloCloud SASE, secured by Symantec, is a single-vendor SASE environment that integrates VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN and Symantec security service edge capabilities. “It tightly integrates the data plane with client access and provisioning and security through the Symantec SSE stack for ease of provisioning and common policy constructs,” said Abe Ankumah, general manager of VMware’s SD-WAN and SASE business.

VMware is also re-introducing the VeloCloud brand, which encompasses SASE, SD-WAN and software-defined access products, because of the high levels of customer awareness and trust in the brand that VMware acquired in 2017, executives said.  The brand had been subsumed into VMware’s SD-WAN products for the past few years but “customers continue to refer to the VMware SD-WAN solution as VeloCloud,” Ankumah said.

The virtualization company said it is also collaborating with Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. to enable the management of connectivity and cloud infrastructure based on the VMware Edge Compute Stack through Singtel Paragon, a multi-network and multicloud orchestration platform for 5G and edge devices. That will enable CSPs to use Singtel 5G without having to redesign their applications with software-defined edge features. The companies plan to establish a Joint Innovation Lab to help enterprises build and test applications before commercial release.

VMware said it’s working with a wide range of CSPs on Open RAN deployments with its Telco Cloud Platform, RAN Intelligent Controller and Service Management and Orchestration framework.

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