Affirmed Networks today announced UnityCloud, a cloud-native mobile core that the company claims to be the industry’s first 5G standalone (SA) mobile core. The new platform, which will be commercially available next month, enables mobile operators to bring multiple generations of wireless technology into a single network, thereby eliminating the need for operators to maintain parallel legacy networks, according to the NFV vendor.

The microservices architecture of UnityCloud also allows operators to create and deploy niche or unproven services quickly at lower costs with minimal risk, Scott Heinlein, senior director of marketing at Affirmed Networks, explained in a phone interview. “Right now it takes a lot of cost, a lot of time to do anything on their network,” he said.

“When you think about virtualization and what’s been done, so far it’s helped a lot around the capex side. It’s helped mobile operators scale their networks so that they’re able to absorb the increase in bandwidth,” Heinlein said. But from an opex and services perspective, network virtualization remains a challenge, he explained. UnityCloud aims to automate aspects of the network and help operators with lifecycle management and greater flexibility with open source technology.

Affirmed Networks released a non-standalone 5G mobile core last year. The NFV vendor has more than 100 customers and is engaged in several trials with Tier 1 operators about UnityCloud deployments that could get underway as early as next month, Heinlein explained.

Chris Nicoll, principal analyst at ACG Research, told SDxCentral that UnityCloud “might be” the first 5G SA mobile core, but emphasized that “the important element is not just to be first, but to be the widest deployed.” Affirmed has a “leg up on its competition” in that regard, particularly among smaller vendors, he explained.

“The operators are looking at not just virtualized solutions but how to move to cloud-native solutions [and] that is a big, unproven step for them,” Nicoll wrote in response to questions. “Experience is a key factor in [operators’] decisions. According to my research, [operators] want to go with an established vendor for an end-to-end 5G solution, but also be able to choose strategic vendors.”

Affirmed’s experience in NFV combined with its new cloud-native core platform puts the company in a good position to compete for business on new SA 5G core networks, even among large incumbent vendors like Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia, Nicoll added.

Affirmed Networks isn’t naming a customers for UnityCloud yet, but the company says it is involved in multiple trials. UnityCloud can be deployed on premises or in public, private, or hybrid cloud environments.

“Telco has traditionally been with legacy hardware, legacy software, where there’s a lot of proprietary technology,” Heinlein said. Moving to a “cloud-native architecture that’s open source based where there’s a fail fast type mentality, where they can offer services quickly, or the network automates most of the operations” is a big change, he said. “That’s a big shift in overall mentality and thinking for telcos, so I think it’s going to be quite a transformation.”