Vodafone today vindicated its virtualization journey with VMware by rattling off a series of expansion efforts, including the full deployment of the vendor’s Telco Cloud Platform across all 11 of its European markets. 

The deal positions VMware as Vodafone’s central nervous system for networks and IT systems, allowing the multinational operator to automate and orchestrate new applications based on its 5G standalone core, which was the first of its kind to be deployed on the continent earlier this year. 

This consistent, cloud-native infrastructure spanning all of Vodafone’s networks and workloads will allow it to commercialize network slicing, ultra-low latency connectivity for critical applications, and massive IoT, according to the operator. 

Vodafone’s migration to virtualized architecture, which it completed across 21 markets last year on non-5G core networks infrastructure, also provides other large operators with a potential framework to follow. The experience thus far indicates how massive and time-consuming these efforts will likely be for other carriers.

Vodafone Eyes Next Level Virtualization on 5G Core

The Vodafone-VMware journey began in 2017. That effort until recently has been squarely focused on legacy infrastructure — a necessary step on the road to 5G SA. This pre-5G effort, which involved the deployment of VMware’s NFV platform, allowed Vodafone to activate network functions about 40% quicker and delivered cost savings up to 55%, according to both companies.

“We’ve made great strides in modernizing and virtualizing our core network. Now we must turn our attention to layering in automation, software engineering and cloud-native principles to simplify operations and accelerate how quickly we can deploy new applications,” Vodafone CTO Johan Wibergh said in a statement.

Vodafone said early deployments of VMware’s full telco cloud stack are underway in Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and the United Kingdom. The operator plans to use VMware Tanzu for Telco and VMware Telco Cloud Automation to orchestrate all of its network functions and services to run its core networks.

“Having launched the first 5G standalone network in Europe, we are now putting all that power into a single cloud-based platform to simplify operations and rapidly respond to customers’ needs,” Wibergh added. “It starts with 5G at the core, but the possibilities are limitless.”

VMware Lands Major Proponent of Telco Vision

Vodafone’s broad adoption of VMware reinforces the vendor’s goal to be the “common software stack” for modern telco infrastructure, as Sanjay Uppal, SVP and GM of VMware’s Service Provider and Edge Business Unit, described it in a recent phone interview. 

VMware’s determination to root its software and service in wireless network infrastructure traverses three layers of network infrastructure: the RAN, core, and transport; secure access service edge (SASE) and SD-WAN; and the edge and public cloud. 

“Our contrast would be that we sell at all these three layers of the stack,” Uppal explained. “It’s a software-based solution that doesn’t lock you into a particular provider that is more monolithic.” 

This relatively neutral approach extends to network infrastructure vendors and cloud providers, but not all hyperscalers are fully supported as of yet. 

“Our belief is that there is the need for an uber-layer that cuts across many of these hyperscalers,” Uppal explained. “When you have a service, regardless of where and who provides it, you should be able to add it to your repertoire of what you need to get done to build your applications.”

This abstracted layer allows service providers to pick and choose services from different hyperscalers without being beholden to them, he added.

The growing mutual affection between Vodafone and VMware will likely push the partnership to other exploratory efforts, including ongoing open radio access network (RAN) trials and overlapping efforts to develop a RAN intelligent controller, a critical area of development for the proliferation of open RAN architecture.