Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Ericsson, and Red Hat are creating a validation lab in Sweden focused on fostering integrated multivendor telecommunication platforms targeted at operators looking for scalable core infrastructure to power their 5G network deployments.

The lab will house a test stack comprised on Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G Core platform; HPE’s ProLiant Compute Gen12 servers and Juniper Apstra fabric managed by its Data Center Director; and Red Hat’s OpenShift. This platform, which will be located near Ericsson’s headquarters, will initially be used to support real-world testing and feedback, with plans next year to shift that focus to validating the integrated offering.

Phil Cutrone, who heads HPE’s telecom efforts, explained to SDxCentral that the move is targeted at providing operators with access to a cloud-native network stack designed to stringent telecom requirements.

“What we're saying is, let's stand up in weeks, not months, a mutual invested-in lab to harden more open standard packages for a given workload, and really telco grade-enable that across Juniper and HPE infrastructure and Ericsson applications,” Cutrone said of the effort.

This move is also designed to answer operator concerns over standardized cloud-native platforms.

“They're asking for how to have a common core cloud and run my applications there, and when I say ‘common,’ it could be a mixture of infrastructure brands, best-of-breed,” Cutrone added. “That's why we're building the HPE version with Ericsson, and you have to think about that vision of and why operators are asking us for this sort of thing.”

Operators have noted this challenge, pointing to their need to take on system integrator (SI) roles as part of their efforts to roll out cloud-based network architectures.

“We were of the conviction that we could go into this journey with the use of partners, and they would actually help us to do most of the heavy lift. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. We actually crashed-and-burned completely,” Boost Mobile CTO Eben Albertyn explained during a recent industry event when describing that carrier’s network deployment. “We had to become the systems integrator ourselves. We had to become an architect and the creator of the underlying infrastructure of the network itself. And we had to become the hub of the spokes around. That was a surprise and a huge slap in the face. We realized that the route that we fashioned was a complete dead end.”

Telecom validation efforts continue

HPE’s work with Ericsson continues a trend by telecom equipment providers in attempting to ease these deployment challenges.

Nokia, for instance, earlier this year worked with Broadcom’s VMware division to integrate the latter’s cloud-based network functions into the former’s latest Telco Cloud Platform (TCP) update.

That integration had Nokia inserting VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform 5.0 iteration into its centralized VMware lab. This allows Nokia to validate its network functions to work on the latest VMware platform.

HPE itself has also attempted to tackle these issues, having launched its own “5G Lab” in 2020. That lab was focused on integrating third-party vendor functions on HPE’s 5G Core Stack and the vendor’s Edge Orchestrator.

HPE also has a history of such efforts with Ericsson, with the two having partnered on virtualized radio access network (vRAN) trials.