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>> Narrator: "theCUBE's" live coverage
is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies,
creating technologies that drive human progress.
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>> Hey everyone, welcome back to "theCUBE,"
the leader in live and emerging tech coverage.
As you well know, we are live at MWC23 in Barcelona, Spain.
Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson.
Day three of our coverage, as you know,
'cause you've been watching the first two days.
A lot of conversations about ecosystem,
a lot about disruption in the telco industry.
We're going to be talking about Open RAN.
You've heard some of those great conversations,
the complexities, the opportunities.
Two guests join Dave and me.
Abdullah Abuzaid, Technical Product Manager at Dell,
and Gil Hellmann, VP Telecom Solutions Engineering
and Architecture at Wind River.
Welcome to the program guys.
>> Thank you. >> Nice to be here.
>> Let's talk a little bit about Dell and Wind River.
We'll each ask you both the same question,
and talk to us about how you're working together
to really address the complexities
that organizations are having when they're
considering moving from a closed environment
to an open environment.
>> Definitely. Thank you for hosting us.
By end of the day,
the relationship between Dell and Wind River is not a new.
We've been collaborating in the open ecosystem
for long a time enough.
And that's one of the,
our partnership is a result of this collaboration
where we've been trying to
make more efficient operation in the ecosystem.
The open environment ecosystem,
it has the plus and a concern.
The plus of simplicity, choice of multiple vendors,
and then the concern of complexity managing these vendors.
Especially if we look at examples
for the Open RAN ecosystem,
dealing with multiple vendors, trying to align them.
It bring a lot of operational complexity
and TCO challenges for our customers,
from this outcome where we build our partnership
with Wind River in order to help
our customer to simplify, or run deployment, operation,
and lifecycle management and sustain it.
>> And who are the customers, by the way?
>> Mainly the CSP customers who are targeting
Open RAN and Virtual RAN deployments.
That digital transformation moving towards
unified cloud environment,
or a seamless cloud experience from Core to RAN,
these are the customers we are working with them.
>> You'll give us your perspective,
your thoughts on the partnership,
and the capabilities that you're enabling,
the CSPs with that.
>> Sure. It's actually started last year here in Barcelona,
when we set together,
and started to look at the, you know, the industry,
the adoption of Open RAN, and the challenges.
And Open RAN brings a lot of possibilities and benefit,
but it does bring a lot of challenges of
reintegrating what you desegregate.
In the past, you purchase everything from one vendor,
they provide the whole solution.
Now you open it, you have different layers.
So if you're looking at Open RAN,
you have, I like to look at it as three major layers,
the management, application, and the infrastructure.
And we're starting to look what are the challenges.
And the challenges of integration,
of complexity, knowledge that operator has
with cloud infrastructure.
And this is where we basically,
Dell and Winder River set together and say,
"How can we ease this?
"How we can make it simpler?"
And we decided to partner
and bring a joint infrastructure solution to market,
that's not only integrated at a lab
at the factory level,
but it basically comes with complete lifecycle management
from the day zero deployment,
through the day two operation,
everything done through location,
through Dell supported, working out of the box.
So basically taking this whole
infrastructure layer integration pain out,
de-risking everything,
and then continuing from there
to work with the ecosystem vendor
to reintegrate, validate the application,
on top of this infrastructure.
>> So what is the,
what is the Wind River secret sauce
in this, in this mix,
for folks who aren't familiar with what Wind River does?
>> Yes, absolutely.
So Wind River, for many, many don't know,
we're in business since 1981.
So over 40 years.
We specialize high performance,
high reliability infrastructure.
We touch every aspect of your day and your life.
From the airplane that you fly, the cars,
the medical equipment.
And if we go into the telco,
most of the telco equipment
that it's not virtualized,
not throughout the fight today,
using our operating system.
So from all the leading equipment manufacturers
and even the smaller one.
And as the world started to go into
desegregation in cloud,
Wind River started to look at this and say,
"Okay, everything is evolving.
Instead of a device that included the application,
the hardware, everything fused together,
it's now being decomposed.
So instead of providing the operating environment
to develop and deploy the application
to the device manufacturer,
now we're providing it basically to build the cloud.
So to oversimplify, I call it a cloud OS, okay.
It's a lot more than OS, it's an operating environment.
But we took basically our experience,
the same experience that, you know,
we used in all those years
with the telco equipment manufacturer,
and brought it into the cloud.
So we're basically providing solution
to build an on-premises scalable cloud
from the core all the way to the far edge,
that doesn't compromise reliability,
doesn't compromise performance,
and address all the telco needs.
>> So I, Abdullah, maybe you can a answer this.
>> Yeah. >> What is the,
what does the go-to-market motion look like,
considering that you have two separate companies
that can address customers directly, separately.
What does that, what does that look like
if you're approaching a possible customer who is,
who's knocking on the door?
>> How does that work?
>> Exactly. And this effort is a Dell
turnkey sales service offering,
or solution offering to our customers.
Where Dell, in collaboration with Wind River,
we proactively validate, integrate,
and productize the solution as engineered system,
knock door on our customer
who are trying to transform to Open RAN or open ecosystem.
We can help you to go through that seamless experience,
by pre-validating with whatever workload
you want to introduce,
enable zero touch provisioning,
and during the day one deployment,
and ensure we have sustainable lifecycle management
throughout the lifecycle of the product in,
in operate, in operational network,
as well as having a unified single call of support
from Dell side.
>> Okay. So I was just going to ask you about support.
So I'm a CSP, I have the solution, I go to Dell for support.
>> Exactly. >> Okay.
So start with Dell, and level one, level two.
And if there are complex issues related to the
cloud core itself,
then Wind River will be on our back supporting us.
>> Talk a little bit about a cust,
a CSP example that is,
is using the technology,
and some of the outcomes that they're able to achieve.
I'd love to get both of your perspectives on that.
>> Vodafone is a great example.
We're here in Barcelona.
Vodafone is the first ora network in Europe,
and it's using our joint solution.
>> What are some of the, the outcomes
that it's helping them to achieve?
>> Faster time to market.
As you see, they already started to deploy
the ORAN in commercial network,
and very successful in the trials
that they did last year.
We're also not stopping there.
We're evolving, working with them together
to improve like stuff around energy efficiency.
So continue to optimize.
So the outcome, it's just simplifying it,
and you know, ready to go.
Using experience that we have,
Wind River is powering the first basically
virtualized RAN 5G network in the world.
This is with Verizon.
We're at the very large scale.
We started this deployment
in late '20 and '19, the first site.
And then through 2020 to 2022,
we basically rolled in large scale.
We have a lot of experience learning from it,
which what we brought into the table
when we partnered with Dell.
A lot of experience from how you deploy at scale.
Many sites from a central location, updates, upgrade.
So the whole day two operation,
and this is coming to bearing the solution
that basically Vodafone is deploying now,
and which allowed them...
If I, if I look at my engagement with Verizon,
started years before we started.
And it took quite some time until we got stuff running.
And if you look at the Vodafone time schedule,
was significantly compressed
compared to the Verizon first deployment.
And I can tell you that there are
other service providers that were announced here
by KDI, for example.
It's another one moving even faster.
So it's accelerating the whole movement to Ora.
>> We've heard a lot of acceleration talk this week.
I'd love to get your perspective, Abdullah,
talking about, you know, you,
you just mentioned two huge names in Telco,
Vodafone and Verizon.
>> Yep. >> Talk a little bit about
Dell's commitment to helping
telecommunications companies really
advance, accelerate innovation so that
all of us on the other end
have this thing that just
works wherever we are 24 by 7.
>> Not exactly.
And this, we go back to the challenges in Open ecosystem.
Managing multiple vendors at the same time,
is a challenge for our customers.
And that's why we are trying
to simplify their life cycle
by have, by being a trusted partner,
working with our customer through all the journey.
We started with Dish in their 5G deployment.
Also with Vodafone.
We're finding the right partners
working with them proactively
before getting into, in front of the customer to,
we've done our homework,
we are ready to simplify the process for you to go for it.
If you look at the RAN in particular,
we are talking with the 5g.
We have ran the simplification,
but they still have on the other side,
limited resources and skillset can support it.
So, bringing a pro,
ahead of time engineer system,
with a zero touch of provisioning enablement,
and sustainable life cycle management,
it lead to the faster time to market deployment,
TCO savings, improved margins for our customers,
and faster business revenue for their end users.
>> Solid outcomes.
>> And, and what you just just described,
justifies the pain associated with
disaggregating and reintegrating,
which is the way that Gill referenced it,
which I think is great because you're not,
you're not, you're not re-aggregating,
(laughs)
you're reintegrating,
and you're creating something that's better.
>> Exactly. >> Moving forward.
Otherwise, why would you do it?
>> Exactly. And if you look at it,
the player in the ecosystem,
you have the vendors, you have the service integrators,
you have the automation enablers,
but kind of they are talking in silos.
Everyone, this is my raci,
this is what I'm responsible for.
I, I'm not able, I don't want to get into something else
while we are going the extra mile
by working proactively in that ecosystem to...
Let's bring brains together,
find out what's one plus one
can bring three for our customers,
so we make it end-to-end seamless experience,
not only on the technical part,
but also on the business aspect side of it.
>> So, so the partnership, it's about reducing the pen.
I will say eliminating it.
So this is the, the core of it.
And you mentioned getting better coverage for your phone.
I do want to point out that the phones are great,
but if you look at the premises of a 5G network,
it's to enable a lot more things
that will touch your life
that are beyond the consumer and the phone.
Stuff like connected vehicles.
So for example, something as simple as collision avoidance,
the ability for the car that goes in front of you
to be able to see what's happening
and broadcast this information to the car behind
that have no ability to see it.
And basically affect our life in a way
that makes our driving safer.
And for this, you need a ultra low,
reliable low latency communication.
You need a 5G network.
>> I'm glad you brought that up,
because you know, we think about,
"Well we just have to be connected all the time."
But those are some of the emerging technologies
that are going to be potentially lifesaving,
and, and really life transforming
that you guys are helping to enable.
So, really great stuff there,
but so much promise coming down the road.
What's next for Dell and Wind River?
And, and when you're in
conversations with prospective CSP's,
what is the superpower that you deliver together?
I'd love to get both of your perspectives.
>> So, if you look at it,
number one, customers look at it,
last savings and their day-to-day operation.
In 5G nature, we are talking
the introduction of ORAN.
This is still picking up.
But there is a mutualization and densification of ORAN.
And this is where we're talking on monetizing my deployment.
Then the third phase, we're talking sustainability
and advanced service introduction.
Where I want to move not only ORAN,
I want to bring the edge at the same side,
I want to define the advanced use cases of edge,
where it enables me with this pre-work being done
to deliver more services and better SLA services.
By end of the day, 5G as a girl mentioned earlier,
is not about a good better phone coverage,
or a better speed robot,
but what customized SLA's I can deliver.
So it enables me to deliver
different business streams to my end users.
>> Yeah. >> So yeah.
I will say there are two pens.
One, it's the technology side.
So for an example, energy efficiency.
It's a very big pin point.
And sustainability.
So we work a lot around this,
and basically to advance this.
So if you look at the integrated solution today,
it's very highly optimized for resource consumption.
But to be able to more dynamically
be able to change your power profile
without compromising the SLA.
So this is one side.
The other side, it's about all those applications
that will come to the 5G network
to make our life better.
It's about integrating, validating,
certifying those applications.
So, it's not just easy to deploy an ORAN network,
but it's easy to deploy those applications.
>> I'd be curious to get your perspective on
the question of ROI in this, in this space.
Specifically with the sort of the macro headwinds
(clears throat) the economies of the world
are facing right now, if you accept that.
What does the ROI timeline look like
when you're talking about moving towards ORAN,
adopting VRAN, an amazing, you know,
a plethora of new services that can be delivered,
but will these operators have the appetite
to take that,
make that investment and take on that risk
based upon the ROI time horizon?
Any thoughts on that?
>> Yeah. So if you look at the early days
or ORAN introduction in particular,
most of the entrepreneurs of ORAN and Virtual RAN
ran into the challenges of
not only the complexity of open ecosystem,
but the integration, is like the redos of the work.
And that's where we are trying to address it via
pre-engineered system or building an engineer system
proactively before getting it to the customers.
Per our result or outcomes we get,
we are talking about 30 to 50% savings on the optics.
We are talking 110 ROI for our customers,
simply because we are reducing the redos,
the time spent to discover and explore.
Because we've done that rework ahead of time,
we found the optimization issues.
Just for example,
any customer can buy the same components
from any multiple vendors,
but how I can bring them together and give,
deliver for me the best performance
that I can fully utilize,
that's, that's where it brings the value for our customer,
and accelerate the deployment
and the operation of the network.
>> Do you have anything to add
before we close in the next 30 seconds?
>> Yeah. Yeah. (laughs)
>> Absolutely. I would say,
we start to see the data coming
from two years of operation at scale.
And the data supports performance.
It's the same or better than traditional system.
And the cost of operation,
it's as good or better than traditional.
Unfortunately, I can't provide more specific data.
But the point is,
when something is unknown in the beginning,
of course you're more afraid,
you take more conservative approach.
Now the data starts to flow.
And from here, the intention needs to go even better.
So more efficiency,
so cost less than traditional system,
both to operate as well as to build up.
But it's definitely the data that we have today says,
the, ORAN system is at part, at the minimum.
>> So, definite ROI there.
Guys, thank you so much for joining Dave and me
talking about how you're helping organizations
not just address the complexities of moving from
close to open, but to your point, eliminating them.
We appreciate your time and, and your insights.
>> Thank you.
>> All right. For our guests and for Dave Nicholson,
I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching "theCUBE,"
the leader in live and emerging tech coverage.
Live from MWC23.
We'll be back after a short break.
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