Michael Ferris, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer | Sas Institute, Inc.
Michael Ferris, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer | Sas Institute, Inc.
Red Hat and Orange have announced a collaboration to enhance the telco cloud foundation for Orange International Networks. This partnership will unify containerized and virtual network functions using Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
Orange's journey towards transforming its international networks began eight years ago with a strategy focused on network softwarization through virtualization. This approach aimed to provide flexibility, cost efficiency, and control over networks and services. More than 30 telecom functions from 12 vendors were virtualized, including SD-WAN, voice, CDN, and roaming.
To further accelerate cloud transformation and service softwarization, Orange is transitioning to a cloud-native infrastructure based on Red Hat platforms. The deployment utilizes Red Hat OpenShift as the base for cloud-native network functions, integrating Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to bolster existing expertise in virtualized workloads. Additionally, the use of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform will facilitate automated deployment and scaling across its infrastructure.
The new platform is set to support various applications such as SD-WAN, SASE gateway, IMS, 4G/5G core, IoT, and roaming services. Currently, six new points of presence have been deployed successfully on this platform.
Fran Heeran from Red Hat stated: "The Orange and Red Hat teams have built a close collaboration over the years based on transparency and simplicity. We’re delighted to see Orange unlocking significant benefits in stability, resilience and time to market with the use of Red Hat technologies."
Jean Louis Le Roux from Orange commented: "We’ve been collaborating with Red Hat in recent years on our extensive and successful network softwarization strategy... We are ready to host advanced telco services... within 10 milliseconds of any customer."
Orange plans to expand its common telco cloud infrastructure globally within two years using this platform. The initiative aligns with sustainability goals by allowing reuse of existing equipment while leveraging power monitoring capabilities in Red Hat OpenShift.
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