Dell Technologies Inc. today is announcing a cloud transformation program, services and new servers aimed specifically at communications service providers.

Dell has been on a two-year campaign to win the hearts and minds of telecom firms, many of which use vertically integrated and aging equipment that is difficult to modernize and scale. The growing popularity of reference architecture called Open RAN, which provides a set of interoperable hardware, software and interfaces that can be built from off-the-shelf hardware, is pushing many CSPs to take their first hard look at embracing cloud-native architectures.

“The reason we’re confident that the tipping point is approaching is that we are having much more process-centric conversations,” said Dennis Hoffman, senior vice president and general manager of Dell’s telecom systems business. “Increasingly, these conversations are about what’s practical and what works, not what’s possible.”

Hoffman said Dell has experienced “high double-digit compounded annual growth” in the network services market. “The business has performed extremely well against the backdrop of a telecommunications network spending that hasn’t always been up and to the right,” he said, noting that Dell now sells directly to the 172 largest network operators outside of China.

Easing the transition

The company’s new Open Telecom Transformation Program addresses the complexity and risk challenges many CSPs face as they attempt to move their networks to the cloud. It combines Dell’s cloud transformation background with professional services tailored for each step of the process.

Hoffman said managing change is a major issue for CSPs that are accustomed to holding on to equipment for 10 years or more.

“The silicon roadmap is typically on more of a three-year cycle, suggesting that there could be as many as three silicon generation changes in a 10-year depreciation window,” he said. “The price/power/performance of the network changes dramatically, so just figuring out how and when to accommodate silicon changes is a meaningful chunk of lifecycle planning, not to mention all of the software layers on top.”

Dell said it’s aiming to simplify the transition by providing preconfigured and certified hardware packages along with modernization services. The Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab provides access to accelerated software and workload validation and lifecycle management to ensure CSP workloads are ready to operate in a transformed environment.

The program includes four steps. Dell works with CSPs to evaluate current infrastructure and operations and define a roadmap to an optimal architecture, operational construct and ecosystem partners. Dell experts and partners work to deploy the plan at scale with minimal disruption.

Dell specialists support the resulting production environment and collaborate with CSPs on knowledge transfer. Finally, Dell Managed Services provides scalability, observability and operational efficiency across multiple clouds with telemetry aggregation and automated issue resolution.

Adapted from the enterprise

“We’ve taken some of our best practices from the enterprise and merged them with telecom expertise to build out essentially a pre-engineered system that’s automated and lifecycle managed for telecom operators,” said Andrew Vaz, vice president for product management in Dell’s telecom systems business. “Think of this as an easy button to establish a horizontal cloud architecture.”

Dell is also expanding its capabilities to outfit CSPs with artificial intelligence in their networks. The Dell AI for Telecom program now includes infrastructure monitoring capability that uses generative AI to support real-time monitoring and management of telecom networks with detailed incident reports and recommended actions to mitigate issues.

Program enhancements include a new PowerEdge XE7745 server with an Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Epyc processor, a Dell XE9680 with an AMD Instinct MI300X accelerator and AI Agent for Telecom Infrastructure Monitoring that uses Metrum AI Inc.’s workload evaluation software.

“It’s purpose-built around AI,” Vaz said. “The goal was to get as much dense AI acceleration on this system as possible. So we’ve maximized the number of PCIe slots and [graphic processing unit] capabilities to twice what we were able to support previously.”

With Metrum AI, operators “can monitor traffic while the network’s running from a multimodal perspective, look at different data sources, see signal degradation, misconfigurations and congestion traffic spikes, and either fix or make recommendations on the network,” he said.

Slew of certifications

The Dell AI for Telecom Certification Program provides validation on Dell infrastructure to simplify integration and enhance network performance. Launch partners include Amdocs Ltd., Kinetica DB Inc., Aira Technologies Inc. and Opanga Networks Inc..

“We have an expansive roadmap key pieces of key network functions all throughout the network that are in process of being certified on raw Dell hardware,” Hoffman said. “You’re going to start to see a a drumbeat of announcements about certifications.”

Enhancements to Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Red Hat Inc. software support AI-ready infrastructure, enabling operations such as network traffic analysis and predictive maintenance. New disaster recovery capabilities help ensure geo-redundancy and business continuity, with integrated Dell PowerSwitches simplifying network configurations.

“We’re using automation software for both Dell and Red Hat, and all tested on Dell infrastructure,” Vaz said. “We automate the whole thing and have one-touch support that makes it a lot easier for telecom operators to instantiate these types of architectures.”

All programs are generally available now.

Image: XH4D/Getty Images