Broadcom has not forgotten about VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform, with the vendor rolling out deployment and feature updates as part of that platform’s 4.0 release.

The deployment updates include the Telco Cloud Platform moving to a two-tiered offering dubbed “Essentials” and “Advanced.”

Essentials is, as labeled, the basic package with “fundamental automation capabilities” like registration for pre-deployed clouds as virtualized infrastructure; container-as-a-service (CaaS) management for lifecycle management of Kubernetes clusters; a CaaS dynamic infrastructure policies integrator; infrastructure automation; network function automation for virtualized network function; role-based access control (RBAC); multi-tenancy; and API integration.

The Advanced package adds multicloud support; network function automation for VNFs, container network functions (CNFs), lifecyle management, dynamic infrastructure policies and third-party virtualized network function (VNF) management support; network service automation; network slicing; and GitOps support for lifecycle management of cloud-native applications. This tier also has assurance capabilities supporting multi-domain, multi-layer monitoring, visibility and analytics from a unified dashboard.

Broader feature updates include the latest iteration of VMware’s vSphere, NSX, vSAN, Tanzu and Cloud Director products.

VMware also bolstered legacy support for older iteration of Kubernetes. Specifically, it now supports VMware’s Tanzu Kubernetes Grid versions 2.1.1 and 2.5, which allows users to continue to use Kubernetes 1.24 clusters created with the former and still be able to create new workload clusters using newer Kubernetes iterations within the latter. Users can also select to update legacy workload clusters as needed.

There are also new security features that prevent network function deployments into a Kubernetes system namespace and provide granular security defaults at the user namespace level instead of systemwide.

VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN updates

Telco Cloud Platform 4.0 also continues to support VMware’s vendor partner ecosystem through its Ready for Telco Cloud program. This basically provides a list of pre-certified VNFs and CNFs from vendors that an operator customer can quickly upload into the Telco Cloud Platform.

That support is also echoed in new updates to VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform RAN, which is an extension of the more tersely labeled Telco Cloud Platform. The RAN iteration is designed as a horizontal platform to support virtualized baseband functions or virtualized distributed units (vDUs) and virtualized central units (vCUs) from different pre-certified vendors.

The latest update provides new fallback support for precision time protocol (PTP) to increase resiliency; CaaS updates to support single-node Kubernetes clusters on VMware’s ESXi bare metal hypervisor; CPU virtualization updates to provide direct control over vRAN workloads to manage power consumption; a smaller footprint to allow the RAN platform to better operate in resource-constrained edge environments; and a technical preview for support of Intel’s 4th-generation Xeon processors.

The Telco Cloud Platform RAN service management and orchestration (SMO) add-on also gained the ability to create multicloud workloads using a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. This supports quicker development, connection, testing, deployment and management of VNFs and CNFs.

These updates are significant for VMware’s ongoing telecom aspirations that have been somewhat overshadowed recently by changes following the Broadcom acquisition. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has repeatedly stated that the new VMware is focused on monetizing its flagship Virtual Private Cloud (VCP) and vSphere products, but the vendor has garnered a significant foothold in the telecom space.

VMware’s certification efforts have been cited by ABI Research, which has touted the vendor as a market leader. ABI Research analyst Kangrui Ling described VMware’s multi-vendor certification program as “diverse and robust,” and helped propel the overall platform to a slight market lead over rival Red Hat.

VMware has steadily increased this partner ecosystem, with its most recent being the certification of NEC’s open radio access network (RAN) and virtualized RAN (vRAN) architecture to work on the platform.

This work has also underpinned 5G telecom network virtualization (NV) efforts by greenfield operators like Dish Network and brownfield work from operators like Vodafone.