Red Hat said it will supply OpenStack Platform to telecom operator Orange for its network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) deployments.
Orange, which has presence in Europe and Africa, will build a modern infrastructure for an agile, responsive network aimed at bringing innovations to customers more quickly and scaling out services dynamically.
Orange is utilizing NFV as part of its network transformation strategy, aiming to benefit from agility that can be enabled by decoupling its software layer from the hardware stack. Orange is using Red Hat OpenStack Platform, for its multinational NFV deployment of agile cloud IaaS, enabling better integration of virtual network functions (VNFs) from a range of tech vendors.
Orange Group’s capital expenditure (Capex) was 4.873 billion euros (+2.8 percent) for the first nine months of 2017. Capex from telecom activities was 4.836 billion euros (+2 percent) and the ratio of Capex from telecom activities to revenues was 15.8 percent. Orange’s investments in fibre and in 4G and 4G+ rose 14.2 percent.
Orange said adjusted EBITDA from telecom activities rose 2.3 percent in the third quarter 2017. The company said adjusted EBITDA margin from telecom activities was 35.4 percent, an improvement of 0.5 percentage.
Red Hat and Orange are collaborating in open source community projects to accelerate technology innovation in network virtualization.
“As we work on an industrial roll out of NFVi, we are confident that standardizing on open source can bring interoperability to the ecosystem for large, scalable cloud environments,” said Christian Gacon, vice president, Wireline Networks and Infrastructure, Orange.
Orange is collaborating with Red Hat as part of a joint engineering program to deliver additional features supporting NFV into OpenStack and other open source communities. The intent of the program is to better address the specific needs of communications service providers and their networks when developing technologies.
Red Hat said OpenStack BGP VPN project aims at letting telecom operators mutually interconnect Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or NFV datacenters and businesses, using industry-standard routing technologies.
“Orange is embracing a role as a modern open communications provider, not only by deploying a fully open technology platform with Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Ceph Storage but also by adding its expertise to community development efforts,” said Darrell Jordan-Smith, vice president, Global Information and Communications Technology, Red Hat.
