IBM launches Cloud for Telecommunications with Cisco, Nokia, Samsung, Lenovo, other partners

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – IBM, further leveraging its acquisition of Red Hat, on Thursday unveiled another cloud product, this time targeting next-generation 5G networks and with partners such as Cisco, Samsung and Nokia onboard.

Lenovo, Dell, HPE and NetApp also are partners along with Intel.

IBM sees the cloud – where it faces major competition from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and others – as a $1 trillion opportunity and believes Red Hat technology positions Big Blue to capitalize on the growing cloud market.

It’s called IBM Cloud for Telecommunications, and it includes Red Hat OpenShift as well as including the recently announced IBM Cloud Satellite.

IBM graphic

Juzt lat week IBM said it was teaming with AT&T to offer cloud computing services over next-generation 5G network technology that is rapidly being deployed across the US. And Raleigh-based Red Hat is a key part of the equation, too.

IBM Cloud for Telecommunications is described as “an open, hybrid [i.e. mixing public, private clouds] cloud architecture designed to help telecommunications providers address the specific challenges of the highly-regulated industry: accelerating business transformation, enhancing digital client engagement and improving agility as they modernize their enterprise applications and infrastructure to unlock the power of 5G and edge [computing].”

Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed, to improve response times and save bandwidth, according to Wikipedia’s definition.

“As 5G becomes more prevalent, telecommunications providers are transforming their networks into agile platforms that can efficiently scale to support growing volumes of data, voice and multi-media services. According to a recent IBV study, 60% of Communications Service Provider (CSP) leaders surveyed agree that they must virtualize their entire network across edge locations, but only half of them are prepared to virtualize in a cloud-native environment,” wrote Howard Boville, Senior Vice President, Hybrid Cloud, and Steve Canepa, Global GM & Managing Director, Communications Sector, IBM, in a blog post.

IBM, using Red Hat technology, teams with AT&T to deploy cloud via 5G

“Built on IBM Cloud Satellite, currently in beta, and leveraging Red Hat OpenShift, clients can deploy IBM Cloud services anywhere: on the cloud, on premises or at the edge, while addressing industry-specific requirements and data protection.”

$1B investmen support

IBM is offering to partners in the cloud ecosystem access to its Cloud Engagement Fund as part of a $1 billion investment “to support partners with funding, technical enablement, and creating proofs of concept. The fund likewise provides onboarding services for optimizing partners’ product configurations and helps accelerate go-to-market efforts for partners using IBM’s hybrid cloud platform.”

IBM says the ecosystem is “the starting point for partners to build out their solutions, helping telecom providers enhance digital customer engagement, modernize with 5G and leverage edge computing. Focused on co-creation with our clients, IBM has deployed a LAB environment to aid our global clients with pre-integration and pre-testing of comprehensive client solutions.”