Ericsson is teaming up with Intel to beef up a hyperscale offering for the data center and for network functions virtualization (NFV).

The new Hyperscale Datacenter System (HDS) 8000, an addition to the converged hardware offering called the Ericsson Cloud System, is based on Intel's Rack Scale Architecture, which combines compute and storage resources in one package for data center deployments.

The idea behind the HDS 8000 is to give service providers a hyperconverged offering to rival the home-built stuff from the likes of Google and Facebook. "The difference is that we're going to provide it to the market," Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg during a presentation kicking off Mobile World Congress.

He made a point of noting that the HDS 8000 will support the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV), the open source effort to create a network functions virtualization (NFV) reference design.

It's Ericsson's announcement, but in a way, it's a coup for Intel. The chip company crafted RSA as an architecture for systems companies to follow. Predictably, the first takers have been the Taiwanese ODMs such as Quanta.

Quanta is a pretty big company, but Ericsson moves RSA into a whole new league. It's the first telecom vendor to adopt RSA and possibly the first major equipment vendor of any type to do so.

"Ericsson brings a lot of reach," says Elisabeth Rainge, an analyst with IDC. Its business covers 187 countries, and more importantly, Ericsson knows how to make deals with the telcos in those countries.

"Vendor financing, leasing, all of that commercial side, is something Ericsson knows that the IT industry doesn't know," she says.

Ericsson has been showing its Cloud System at MWC for a couple of years. I first saw it at MWC 2013, when the product was a 192-blade-server cabinet — sort of a server farm in a box. Ericsson has since tied the Cloud System to software-defined networking (SDN) as well.

The HDS 8000 also includes Ericsson Secure Cloud Storage and Ericsson Continuum. The latter, which stems from the acquisition of Apcera, adds policy-based cloud management and security to the mix.

It's not known how much impact Ericsson has had on the server market, because the company doesn't reveal any numbers to analysts. Cisco has bragged about becoming a top server provider through its Unified Computing System (UCS). Ericsson might not be able to claim the same market share, but it would probably be more than a radar blip, especially if its partnership with Intel bears fruit.

MWC Disclosure: Craig Matsumoto was rejected for a Mobile World Congress press pass. He is attending MWC 2015 on a pass supplied by Brocade and plans to use the Ericsson stand as an ersatz press room.