Dell Technologies is pushing automation and new support bundles to help communication service providers (CSPs) manage cloud-based infrastructure and services. This is becoming increasingly important as operators migrate toward next generation 5G network deployments.

The automation component is through Dell’s Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite software that automates the deployment and management of multivendor deployments. It uses declarative automation to simplify server configurations and software deployment, and open APIs and Dell services to automate integration with embedded operating support and business support systems (OSS/BSS).

The suite also provides closed-loop automation and telemetry on equipment temperature, CPU and memory utilization to support network operation management.

Andrew Vaz, VP of product management for Dell Technologies’ Telecom Systems Business, said that the automation suite is designed to automate management and orchestration of a carrier’s network operation from the core to the radio access network (RAN) through a single pane of glass.

This capability taps into Dell’s acquisition of Cloudify in early 2023. Vaz said that acquisition provided an “intent-driven orchestrator where we can offer pretty complex workflows in the system.”

“We have the ability to offer blueprints to customize various workflows for our customers,” Vaz said. “We have a set of common services in this system so we can have a common view of inventory, as an example, a common set of authentication and authorization feature sets.”

Vaz also noted Dell can now aggregate telemetry across the infrastructure and “send those to northbound systems.”

This new platform is also an evolution of Dell’s bare metal Orchestrator (BMO), which the vendor launched in late 2021. The BMO platform evolved from Dell’s Project Metalweaver initiative, and designed to automate service delivery, tasks, and workflows across hundreds of thousands of servers running 5G and open RAN networks.

“Think of this as BMO evolving into the automation suite,” Vaz said.

Vaz said this evolution is unique in the market because it can tap int Dell’s “full breadth of tools we’re bringing for infrastructure.”

“We think we can give the most effective automation capabilities with all the orchestration capabilities, the flexibility of the blueprints, API's, the telemetry,” Vaz said. “Frankly, nobody knows how the Dell infrastructure works better than Dell. And we think this can nicely plug in to any brownfield stack.”

Dell is also continuing to evolve its Telecom Infrastructure Blocks portfolio with deeper Red Hat integration that provides new edge and RAN workload support.

Dell launched the Telecom Infrastructure Blocks in 2022. They are designed as a cloud-native package of services designed to meet specific telecom workloads and use cases. They traverse from the network core out to the open radio access network (RAN) distributed and centralized units (DU/CU).

Dell provides the Blocks as a curated set of components that operators can use directly or customize to suit their workload needs.

Red Hat was one of the initial pre-integrated modules offered by Dell. It uses Dell servers, including the new PowerEdge XR8000 server, with Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (K8s). This package is designed to simplify telecom cloud design, deployment and lifecycle management.

Vaz said the initial Red Hat Blocks “actually had the [1.0 version] of the [automation suite],” with the new updated version “gaining a bunch of functionality” to support workloads running at the edge.

“We've dropped the footprint of the overall system,” Vaz said up the updates. “We've added the automation suite. We've also enhanced the types of deployments and use cases with Red Hat specifically.”

Dell's latest round of updates also further the vendor's ongoing push into the telecom space, which Vaz said was based on providing the right platform for its CSP customers to better utilize and monetize their network investments.

“The foundation of any of our telecom ambitions at Dell is to build out the infrastructure layer, we view it as a horizontal infrastructure layer, that operators can use as we go forward across their whole network,” Vaz said. “That's really what we're seeing as a cloud transformation principle. We see where the operators are today, and we realize for them to go into new market segments and be more effective and respond to those enterprise requests ... they have to move to a more agile, nimble, fast architecture in order to even handle that. So, to me, that's the starting point.”

The Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite is set for global availability in April, while the updated Red Hat Blocks platform will be available in May.