VMware updated its cloud orchestration capabilities that power its edge compute stack and secure access service edge (SASE) products, and also rolled out its own managed private 5G network platform. The vendor said these new services are tied to its expanded work with the software-defined edge.

The new VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator replaces the vendor’s SASE Orchestrator and is its latest attempt to help orchestrate cloud services at the edge. It provides a unified management platform for both SASE and VMware’s Edge Compute Stack, which is designed to allow for simplified control of edge compute, infrastructure, networking and security.

Sanjay Uppal, SVP and GM of service provider and edge at VMware, explained in a press briefing that the orchestrator is targeted at widely dispersed, resource constrained edge deployments that also are highly reliant on automated programmability.

“The ability to scale these infrastructures to thousands or hundreds-of-thousands is absolutely essential,” Uppal said. “These are all dispersed locations so this is why [VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator] with its full-based system is so critical.”

It’s also a key component of VMware’s Edge Compute Stack. That platform is the commercialization of VMware’s Project Keswick, which it unveiled last year. That lightweight project was designed to work on any VMware-certified hardware as an endpoint for Kubernetes-managed workloads and provide increased security for those workloads by way of a smaller attack surface.

The Edge Compute Stack is designed to allow management of edge use cases using a simplified approach to virtual machine (VM) and container-based applications and infrastructure. This includes pull-based configuration with zero-touch provisioning to support deployments and ongoing management.

Uppal noted that the platform was being used by several enterprises to manage warehouse and production facilities, specifically citing work with Audi at a manufacturing plant in Germany.

“It's a fairly intense arrangement,” Uppal said. “We have some of our people working with Audi on the factory floor and we want to bring the wins that we had on the telecom side. This disaggregation really brought a lot of benefits into what's happening on the manufacturing side, with Audi being the lead example.”

One of the services now available running on top of that Edge Compute Stack is VMware’s Private Mobile Network managed service, which is scheduled to launch this quarter.

Uppal explained that the private network platform includes a private core capable of supporting both 4G LTE and 5G technology and a “certified RAN” that allows it to support different radio access network (RAN) providers.

“You may be using Ethernet, Wi-Fi … private 5G is yet another option that you can bring in and then run an intelligent overlay from VMware on top for all of the edge workloads,” Uppal said.

The platform is targeted at managed service providers or service providers, with Uppal explaining that the service provider does not need to own or control its own telecom facilities. But, the platform does require the ability for the service provider to manage on-site deployment and spectrum management of the platform.

“For that we really need a service provider on a managed service provider that understands radio,” Uppal said.

VMware stated it was working with Betacom, which is a managed 5G-as-a-service provider; Boingo Wireless, which specializes in managed campus deployments; and Federated Wireless, which has its own private 5G platform and is a certified Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum manager. Those three are all “beta wireless service provider partners.”

Uppal added that VMware has garnered considerable experience in the edge space through its ongoing work with nascent mobile Network Operator Dish Wireless, which includes more than 16,000 5G-enabled cell sites, and more than 600,000 edge deployments supporting VMware’s SD-WAN and security services edge (SSE) products.

“What we're doing now with the software-defined edge is bringing both the architecture as well as, in some cases, the go-to-market and the partnership and ecosystem together as one framework so that whether you're deploying a workload to run your 4G and 5G network, whether you're deploying network and security services to make sure that the networking is programmable and the security is on demand, or you're running workloads on the factory floor in an agriculture field, in a hospital, all of this is running on one framework, and that framework is provided by the VMware Edge Compute Stack, the VMware [Edge Cloud Orchestrator], our Telco Cloud Platform or service NFV managment and network orchestration (NFV Managment and Network Orchestration (MANO)) (NFV MANO) offerings,” Uppal added. “We're very bullish about how the software-defined edge can come in and can really help customers across all of these verticals, starting of course with a favorite one, which is the telco.”