Dell Technologies added more pavement to its 5G telecommunications roadmap with new overlay partners, a private 5G platform, new underlying server technology, and a new ecosystem lab location.

The new overlay partner is Red Hat that is now available via Dell’s Telecom Infrastructure Blocks platform. This cloud-native product includes hardware, software, and services operators can use to build, scale, and operate core network functions.

Andrew Vaz, VP of product management for Dell’s Telecom Systems business, in a press briefing described the system as using Red Hat’s software on top of Dell’s hardware to “lock down your telecom foundation.”

“This is a fully engineered system,” Vaz said. “It's validated from end to end. We run this through our CI/CD testing pipeline as we get all of these pieces together, the firmware, the BIOS pieces, the cloud platform software, and test this with over 700 test cases that we have to basically harden this and make that foundation bulletproof. When you have that you can start putting all the workloads you want on it in a very reliable manner.”

The platform ships out from Dell, which also provides end-user support for the full platform.

Vaz explained that by moving to this cloud-native architecture running in its Blocks platform operators can see a 40% opex savings, 10% capex savings, and 30% total cost of ownership savings over a five-year period. He also noted greater energy efficiency as this platform optimizes hardware and server usage.

Dell is also in talks with other cloud and platform providers to expand the reach of the Blocks platform. This feeds into the need for operators to avoid being locked into a specific platform if they sign up for the Blocks service.

Vaz said that operators at this point are more interested in network and service integrity that can come from a more siloed platform.

“What we see, especially in the [radio access network], is that that whole stack is very sensitive, or touchy, if you will,” Vaz said. “So if any piece of that stack moves or is not verified, it has potential to break, so it's not very easy for people to swap out different pieces of it yet. Today, the goal is to offer a practical level of openness. And that idea is really resonating with the telecom operators. They're seeing how hard it can be to actually move what was known as a fully integrated stack to these more disaggregated stacks and getting them to work. So I would say this is a timeline question of when it will happen.”

Dell unveiled its Telecom Infrastructure Blocks platform last year. They act as a cloud-native package of services designed to meet specific telecom workloads and use cases, traversing from the network core out to the open radio access network (RAN) distributed and centralized units (DU/CU).

Wind River was its first platform partner, which offers its Studio technology to provide a container-as-a-service layer for a distributed cloud and the tools to automate and manage day-two operations at scale. Wind River Studio is the vendor’s cloud-native 5G edge network middleware based on Kubernetes and containers.

Dell is taking a slightly less integrated approach with its Private Wireless Program. This program includes pre-validated private wireless products that provide operators and enterprise with a choice of services that should work in a commercial environment out of the box.

The vendor said it can work from being just an advisor for customers on their private wireless plans all the way to putting together and operating a fully managed service.

“We have teams focused on this in terms of the actual use cases and how to bring the whole solution together, either with an operator to sell to enterprises or directly with an enterprise,” Vaz explained.

Dell touted work with Airspan and Expeto targeted at medium and large enterprises that need to extend on-site and remote application support for 4G LTE and 5G technology running on private or public networks. It’s also working with Athonet to target small and medium businesses to deploy their choice of network architecture, radio vendor, and spectrum needed for a private wireless product.

Dell also launched new PowerEdge servers targeted at telecommunication operators, open RAN, and mobile edge computing workloads.

The XR8000, XR7620, and XR5610 servers use Intel’s latest 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processors and a smaller footprint than traditional servers that can better fit into edge or space-constrained environments. They can also tap into Intel’s virtualized RAN (vRAN) Boost system to eliminate the need for an external accelerator card, which can reduce compute and resource needs.

Dell’s telecom-focused servers follow the launch earlier this year of Dell’s data center-focused HS5610, HS5620, and R760 product unveiling.

And finally, Dell opened a new Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab (OTEL) in Cork, Ireland, to complement its initial location in Round Rock, Texas. It’s also working on a new validation scheme.

Dell launched its OTEL in mid-2021. They are designed to provide a location for ecosystem partners to test, certify, and validate open telecom platforms and applications that can then feed into the packaged services Dell is offering into the telecom market. Dell said its Texas location currently supports more than 25 customers and partners.

It’s also planning to add a Wind River self-certification lab testing environment that will allow for certification on products running on Wind River’s Studio platform. The new test environment is scheduled to be available by mid-year.