HPE Pledges 25 Percent Reduction In Total Cost of Ownership For Telecom Providers With New Open RAN Solution Stack

‘We believe that where telecom companies implement an Open RAN strategy solution versus a proprietary solution they are looking at about a 25 percent reduction in total cost of ownership,’ says HPE Senior Vice President Phil Mottram. ‘That’s the kind of magnitude of savings that can be driven by a (telecom) operator if they take a more open approach.’

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Wednesday pledged a 25 percent reduction in total cost of ownership for telecom providers implementing the new HPE GreenLake Open RAN (Radio Access Network) cloud native solution stack.

HPE said the GreenLake pay-per-use platform provides a cost effective path for telecom providers to leverage HPE’s innovative 5G Open RAN stack. The Open RAN solution stack will be available in the second quarter.

“We believe that where telecom companies implement an Open RAN strategy solution versus a proprietary solution they are looking at about a 25 percent reduction in total cost of ownership,” said HPE Senior Vice President Phil Mottram, who took the helm of the new HPE Telecommunications Group in January. “That’s the kind of magnitude of savings that can be driven by a (telecom) operator if they take a more open approach.”

Furthermore, Open RAN enables telecom providers to deploy innovative edge applications 120 percent faster than with proprietary telco networks, said Mottram. “We are seeing applications increasingly moving out towards the edge,” he said.

The HPE telco edge portfolio includes HPE Aruba and Silver Peak SD-WAN, which telecom operators can bundle and sell to enterprise customers, said Mottram. “That’s a new revenue stream for the telecom companies,” he said. “The other side of it as well is we have a great portfolio around orchestration. We have got an edge orchestration product that enables the operators to roll out applications toward the edge- either their own applications they could charge for or alternatively (deliver) on behalf of the enterprise customer and have that as a chargeable service. But we believe we can help the telcos drive new revenue at the telco edge.”

With the advent of 5G, telecom operators are embracing more economical open solutions that give them the ability to set up new network functions ten times faster than with proprietary networks, said Mottram.

The Open RAN 5G technology is powering more “mix and match” infrastructure and network functions among telecom providers, said Mottram. “We believe we can help with some very tailored infrastructure and service propositions to support the telcos in that move,” he said.

Last but not least, HPE can help telecom providers unlock the “full potential” of 5G in the core network, said Mottram. “We not only offer the infrastructure and platform as a service layer, but we also have our own software network functions that we can package and deliver to telecom operators and then charge them for those on a consumption based model,” he said.

Mottram said HPE is already working with systems integrators and some of the big consulting companies on the 5G Open RAN telecom opportunity. “We have quite a lot of prospects and a good pipeline with them right now,” he said.

“We are partner//alliance friendly and we have put more effort and resources in the last 12 months,” he said. That said, there are currently a limited number of partners able to bring the 5G solution stack to market, said Mottram. That will change as more private 5G rollouts get underway, he said.

HPE is bringing a 100 percent cloud native software based AI and data driven 5G core to telcom providers with what it is calling the industry’s “first” Open RAN solution stack.

“When you go beyond the slogan this is a dramatic shift in the way technology is built for this (telco) industry,” said HPE Vice President of Telecom Domenico Convertino.

The open 5G core stack has been battle-tested in a multivendor telco network demo. “What is important in today’s demo is the ability to show automation in the way the network reacts to service degradation,” he said. “There is a robot that is connected via 5G to a specific (network) slice. It is visible in the demo that as soon as there is a degradation in the connectivity to the robot- automatically the core network- thanks to the policies associated with the robot- is able to reconfigure the (network) slice and the rest of the network in order to secure the same service quality.”

The demo starkly shows the benefits of an open, multivendor 5G network, said Convertino. “It is a way to show in action things we have been discussing in the industry for years,” he said.

HPE’s telecom Operation Support Services (OSS) and orchestration tools are reacting in “real time” to “reconfigure the network and delivery services at the quality that is expected,” said Convertino.

As part of the 5G blitz, HPE also unveiled a new Open RAN workload optimized server, the ProLiant DL110 Gen 10 Plus server. HPE said the DL110 – which is based on the upcoming third generation Intel Xeon processor- is designed to provide low power consumption required for RAN sites.

Worth Davis, president of the solution provider business at Computex Technology Solutions, No. 182 on the CRN SP500, said HPE is providing much needed technology to accelerate edge applications.

“Bundling all this together should provide the ability to bring true edge applications to an oil pipeline or a factory in a rural area,” said Davis. “It’s easy to put an internet of things device in a metropolitan area. It takes a lot more effort to bring it to what may be the most valuable data 200 miles away on an oil pipeline in a rural area. That is why 5G is critical.”

The HPE 5G innovation strikes at the heart of the edge computing shift that is reshaping the technology landscape. “This is the innovation the industry needs,” said Davis. “Everybody needs to be investing here. The most valuable data is truly out at the edge. Everybody wants that edge data. The more cost effectively we can get them that data is key. Right now it is cost prohibitive to get that data.”