Ericsson Promises Cloud and Service Provider SDN with OpenStack

Ericsson outlined its plans for the distribution and orchestration of cloud capabilities horizontally across the network.

Essentially, the Ericsson Cloud System will leverage an open, distributed platform based on OpenStack and KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine).  It will use an Ericsson Cloud Manager for end-to-end orchestration. The capabilities will be enabled across the Ericsson Blade System (EBS) and the Ericsson Smart Service Router (SSR). Together, will deliver end-to-end elasticity across network, compute and storage assets.

The target release date for the Ericsson Cloud System is Q1 2014.

“We protect existing operator investments when introducing new technologies. We implement cloud-enabled networks by evolving what operators already have in the field. We do this by using established telecom platforms – such as EBS and SSR – and integrating them with new software in a way that ensures carrier-grade performance, while introducing a platform for new partners. This systematic implementation of end-to-end elasticity across network, computing and storage assets enables the delivery of new services and business models and is what we call Cloud Evolution,” stated Magnus Furustam, Vice President and Head of Product Area Core and IMS at Ericsson.

Ericsson’s Blade System is used to power its Mobile Switching Center Server (MSC-S), which controls all circuit-switched call services, the user plane and media gateways. A new MSC-S Blade Cluster will scale the softswitch and increases node availability and server capacity. It can add capacity for softswitching based on traffic conditions, or leave capacity for other functions.

Ericsson’s Smart Services Router (SSR) is a “multi-application” edge platform for advanced services on both fixed access and broadband wireless access. Specific blades deliver processing power for applications, including: video (caching), mobility (mobile gateway), business and residential services with DPI and policy enforcement.

http://www.ericsson.com/news/1677723