Wind River helping Vodafone deliver on O-RAN future
Wind River discusses its work with Vodafone , to help in its efforts to build Europe ’ s first commercial Open Radio Access Networks .
Wind River – a global leader in intelligent edge software – is in the vanguard of businesses driving the digital transformation of mission-critical systems and advancing the new intelligent machine economy .
One of the areas where the company is helping usher customers into an everchanging future is telecommunications . “ We ’ re constantly strategising operations for the future ,” says Kevin Dallas , Wind River President and CEO .
An important area for Wind River in telecoms is its work with Open RAN ( O-RAN ). This is a new approach to building mobile networks . Traditional RAN solutions required telecoms operators to work with single suppliers , an approach that works against smaller vendors , who lack the financial muscle to build and manage RAN solutions .
Wind River is embracing O-RAN in its work with telecoms customers , and as a result of its contributions to O-RAN including the contribution of key open-source technology , the company has been selected by customers such as Vodafone for production deployment of 5G .
“ We were thrilled to be selected by Vodafone , to help in its efforts to build Europe ’ s first commercial O-RAN , which will be one of the largest in the world ,” says Dallas . “ Vodafone believes this will be the catalyst for other large-scale O-RAN deployments , and spearhead the next wave of digital transformation across Europe .”
But as well as opportunities , new technologies also bring challenges , most of which concern system integration . Vodafone recently published a white paper on the challenges of O-RAN system integration , with a call to action for ecosystem providers to integrate much earlier .
“ Instead of buying a single box from a traditional vendor multiple vendors in the ecosystem need to work together ,” Dallas explains .
“ Distributed networks are complex ,” adds Dallas . “ This is why our focus is on “ providing ease of deployment , increased levels of automation and operational efficiency .”
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