[February 24, 2014]

Dell Supports Telecommunications Industry Transformation with Industry Partnerships, Leadership in Network Functions Virtualization, New Data Center Offerings, and Customer Success

Dell today announced it's extending its collaboration with Red Hat (News - Alert) announced in December 2013 to jointly engineer OpenStack-based NFV and SDN solutions for the telecom market segment. Dell is also collaborating with Calsoft Labs, an Alten Group company, to deliver NFV and SDN solutions that include the latest Dell OEM (News - Alert) products.

In addition, Dell shared it has taken the leadership role in CloudNFV, a consortium focused on demonstrating and implementing an open, cloud-based NFV model to further support transformation within the telecommunications industry. To enable faster time to market while helping lower costs and boost profitability, Dell also unveiled new server and storage solutions specifically customized for Dell OEM telecommunications customers. Lastly, as Dell continues to focus on its commitment to customer success, Dell announced a Dell OEM Solutions customer win with Aculab.

Network Functions Virtualization

Dell understands the myriad of technology challenges facing telecommunications companies today, including the necessity to integrate multiple proprietary hardware appliances and lack of operational flexibility and service delivery agility. Dell believes NFV can help solve those issues and transform the telecommunications industry by utilizing an open, disaggregated, cloud-based and data-driven approach. For those reasons, Dell became a founding member of CloudNFV, a consortium to develop, test and implement a cloud-based NFV model. Dell, specifically Dell Research, is leading the CloudNFV group, continuing the company's long history of championing open and standard solutions to provide customers with choice and consistency across multiple technologies. To complement Dell server and storage offerings, Dell Networking has been shipping SDN-enabled networking fabric products and solutions to enterprises, forming a solid basis for NFV solutions.

Dell is taking its focus on NFV and SDN a step further by collaborating with industry partners including Red Hat and Calsoft Labs to help telcos capitalize on these transformative technology approaches.

• Dell is extending its co-engineering agreement with Red Hat announced in December 2013 to include NFV and SDN solutions built specifically for the telecom segment to help operators increase infrastructure agility and reduce costs. Dell and Red Hat will also offer solutions based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform to better enable scalable, open infrastructures so operators can focus on driving innovation with new telecom services instead of worrying about infrastructure logistics. The Dell-Red Hat collaboration combines Dell's scalable, end-to-end solutions and services with Red Hat's open-source software and intelligent systems to create a high-performance, cost-effective, and flexible infrastructure foundation so telecommunications companies can transform their business and gain a competitive advantage.
• Calsoft Labs, an Alten Group company, is collaborating with Dell as a value-added reseller (VAR) and systems integrator to deliver NFV and SDN solutions that include the latest Dell OEM products. Calsoft Labs offers a suite of high-performance virtual network functions (VNFs), OpenStack-based NFV orchestration framework and professional services for staging VNFs in a telco datacenter and integration with service delivery platforms, service roll-out management and operations support. Calsoft Labs utilizes Dell PowerEdge products based on the latest Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family to offer unmatched scalability, expandability and NEBS-certified reliability with Dell's established, high-ranking services and support. Together, Dell and Calsoft Labs will offer complete NFV solutions comprising hardware, software and systms integration services to telecom operators worldwide working to virtualize network functions as part of their network transformation initiatives.

Taking advantage of Dell OEM Solutions' global reach and end-to-end capabilities, telecommunications companies can bring their intellectual property to market faster and ultimately help lower operational expenses, increase profitability and simplify operations. Dell OEM solutions for telecommunications blends certified reliability and cost-effective components for high volume environments. Pre-configured storage and servers are based on open standards to help maximize compatibility, scalability and expandability for the highest possible level of stability. New server and storage solutions include:

• Dell PowerEdge R420xr server - The new ruggedized server is the latest addition to the catalog of Dell OEM solutions optimized for telecommunications customers. The two-socket server is repackaged in a hardened, short depth 1U enclosure. The PowerEdge R420xr is ideally suited for harsh environments including telecommunications and oil and gas companies. It is also being validated against MIL-STD-810G specifications.
• Dell PowerVault MD3400, MD3800 and MD3960 families - Dell also previewed next generation and new cost-effective entry level storage arrays and expansion enclosures, delivering improved connectivity and performance to enable telecommunications and other industries to operate more effectively. Select configurations of the MD3460 and MD3860 arrays offer up to twice the performance of the prior generation¹ and the ability to scale with flexible options in drive types and connectivity protocols to provide customers with versatile solutions to help manage their data.

Customer Successes

Dell OEM Solutions has worked with telecommunications companies for more than 15 years and has helped more than 2,000 global customers in 40 vertical markets configure and deliver customizable tier-one OEM technologies. Dell OEM Solutions continues to demonstrate momentum in the industry with new customer wins including:

• Aculab, a leading provider of telephony products to the global communications market, uses the Dell OEM server platform for the company's state-of-the-art GroomerII gateway appliance. Aculab's GroomerII is used by many large telecommunications providers worldwide for integrating internet-based telephony with traditional telephony systems. Through its engagement with Dell OEM Solutions, Aculab is able to fulfill orders for GroomerII faster than ever before and can now provide customers with a fully customized and ready-to-go solution within days rather than weeks.

Supporting Quotes

• "Expanding our co-engineering agreement with Dell to also focus on the telecommunications industry was an obvious next step to better serve telcos and fully utilize both the strengths of Red Hat and Dell," said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, Virtualization and OpenStack, Red Hat. "We're committed to jointly engineering OpenStack-based NFV and SDN solutions built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform to help telecommunications customers take full advantage of such transformative technologies to in turn, transform their business."
• "Calsoft Labs integration and product development services in NFV, SDN and Big Data markets are powered with Dell OEM solutions," said Narendra Dhara, senior vice president of engineering and CTO, Calsoft Labs. "With Dell server products we can offer scalable and carrier grade cloud infrastructure and a platform to deploy our customer solutions enabling us to achieve tremendous performance on solutions developed on Dell hardware."
• "We work closely with innovators in the telecommunications industry to bring their products to market faster and more efficiently by providing ready-to-go, high-performing solutions that are easily customizable. Dell OEM Solution's market insight, flexibility and speed in delivering tailored solutions separate us from other manufacturers and integrators," said Joyce Mullen, vice president and general manager, Dell OEM Solutions. "To continue that differentiation, we're extending our collaboration with Red Hat and teaming with Calsoft Labs to deliver NFV and SDN solutions, for which the telecommunications industry is clearly hungry. Through our work with Red Hat and Calsoft, together we're helping the telecommunications industry to transform by implementing such disruptive technology approaches."
• "The R720 t is a superb product," said Ian Colville (News - Alert), product manager, Aculab. "Dealing directly with Dell as the chassis manufacturer, rather than with a local distributor, means a better supplier relationship which is very important for Aculab. As the chassis arrives fully tested and assembled, the benefits from hardware 'burn-in' pre-shipment mean we gain a faster, slicker turnaround on customer order preparation."
• "Sandvine's communications service provider customers require high-performance, scalability and reliability in their network policy control solutions. The combination of Dell and Red Hat provides an excellent platform on which Sandvine's business intelligence, service creation and traffic optimization software can execute in Cloud and Data Centre environments," said Don Bowman, CTO, Sandvine. "As the telecom industry moves to Network Functions Virtualization, we are looking forward to expanding our partnerships with Dell and Red Hat around their OpenStack-based NFV solutions all the more."

Availability

• The Dell PowerEdge R420xr ruggedized server will be available to OEMs in spring 2014. The Dell PowerVault MD3400, MD3800 and MD3960 series will be available in spring 2014.
• The co-engineered Dell-Red Hat OpenStack-based NFV and SDN solutions are expected to be available in 2014.
• Calsoft Lab NFV and SDN solutions are available today.

Additional Resources

To learn more about Dell OEM Solutions for telecommunications companies and see a demonstration of the Dell PowerEdge 420XR ruggedized server, stop by Dell booth 2L10 in Hall 2 during Mobile World Congress (News - Alert).

About Dell

Dell Inc. listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.dell.com. Dell OEM Solutions helps its customers find more balance between execution and innovation with dedicated OEM resources, industry-standard hardware and global services and support capabilities. Dell helps its OEM customers improve their time to revenue and run their operations more efficiently for increased competitive edge. Learn more at www.dell.com/oem.

¹ Based on January 2014 Dell internal testing using an IOMeter performance tool comparing the new MD34x0 12Gb SAS (News - Alert) and MD38x0 16Gb FC arrays, versus the previous MD3 generation for large block sequential read. Actual performance may vary.

Red Hat is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. The OpenStack mark is either a registered trademark/service mark or trademark/service mark of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries, and is used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. Red Hat is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.

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