Odded Solomon, VMware & Jared Woodrey, Dell Technologies | MWC Barcelona 2023
the Cube's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies creating technologies that drive human progress welcome back to Barcelona Spain everyone it's thecube live at mwc 23 day three of four days of cube coverage it's like a Canon of cute content coming right at you I'm Lisa Martin with David Nicholson we've got Dell and VMware here going to be talking about the ecosystem Partnerships and what they're doing to further organizations in the Telco Industries please welcome Jared woodry director of partner engineering open Telecom ecosystem labor Hotel Odin Solomon is here as well director product management VMware service provider and Edge business unit at VMware guides great to have you on the program thank you for having me welcome to the cube so Jared first question for you talk about otel I know there's a big announcement this week but give the audience contacts and understanding of what otel is and how it works sure so the open Telecom ecosystem lab is physically located in Round Rock Texas is the the heart and soul of it but uh this week we also just announced opening up the Cork Ireland extension of the hotel what the reason for our existence is to try and make it as easy as possible for both partners and customers to come together and to to re-aggregate this disaggregated ecosystem so that comes with a number of automation tools and basically just giving a known good testing environment so that tests that happen in our lab are as close to real world as they possibly can be and make it as transparent and open as possible for both Partners like VMware as well as customers a good talk about what you're doing with gel and otil and give us a customer example of maybe of one that you're working with or even even mentioning it by you know a high level descriptor if you have to yeah so uh we provide a Techo Cloud platform which is essentially a vertical in VMware uh the Telco Cloud platform is serving Network function vendors such as Ericsson Nokia mavenir and so on uh what we do with the with Dell as part of this partnership is essentially complementing the platform with some additional functionality that is not coming out of the box we used to have a data protection uh in the past but this is no longer our main business focus so we do provide apis that we can Expose and work together with the Dell ppdf solution so customer can benefit from this and Leverage The partnership and have overall solution that is not coming out of the box from VMware I'm curious from a VMware perspective uh VMware is associated often with the v in VMware virtualization and we've seen a transition over time uh between sort of flavors of virtualization um and what what is the mix currently today between in the in the Telecom space between environments that are leveraging what we would think of as more traditional virtualization with you know full-blown Linux Windows operating systems in a VM versus the world of uh containerized microservices what does that mix look like today where do you see it going yeah so uh the VMware Taco Cloud platform exists for uh about eight years and if we started around that time um you might hear about openstack in addition to VMware uh so uh this has definitely helped the network equipment providers with virtualizing their Network functions those are typically vnfs virtual Network functions inside the VMS essentially we have uh 4G applications so core applications EPC we have IMS those are typically I would say maybe 80 or 90 percent of the ecosystem right now 5G is associated with coordinating Network functions okay so 5G is getting started now uh getting deployed there is an exponential growth on the core side now when we expand towards the edge of the network we see a more potential growth this is 5G run we see the V run we see the open run we see early pocs we see field trials that are starting we obviously has ever production customer now you just spoke to one so this is really starting Cloud native is really starting I would say about 10 to 20 percent of the network functions these days are Cloud native your question for you you mentioned data protection a huge topic there obviously from a security perspective data protection used to be the responsibility of the csps you guys are changing that can you talk a little bit about how you're doing that and what Dell's play there is yeah so power protect data management is uh is a product that's produced by Dell so what this does is it enables uh uh Power data protection over uh virtual Cloud as well as the physical infrastructure of of specifically in this case of a telecoms ecosystem so what this does is enables an ability to rapidly redeploy and back up existing configurations all the way up to the to the TCP and TCA that that was the the basis of our work here with VMware so you've offloaded that responsibility from the csps you freed them from that so so the work that we did honestly was to make sure that we have a very clear and concise and accurate uh procedures for how to connect this as well and to put this through a realistic and real world as if it was in a telecoms own production Network what did that would actually look like and what it would take to pull up to bring it back up as well so our responsibility is to make sure that when we when we provide these products to the customers that not only do they work exactly as they're intended to but there's also documentation to help support them and to enable them to have their exact specifications about fire as well got it so talking a little bit about otel's expansion into pork what you guys are doing together to enable csps here in emea yeah so the reason why we opened up a facility in Cork Ireland was uh to give uh you know for an emea audience for an Amia csps an ability to look and feel and touch the the some of the products that we're working on it also just facilitates and ease especially for a european-based uh Partners to have a chance to very easily come to a lab environment uh the the difference though honestly is the between Round Rock Texas and Cork Ireland is that it's virtually an extension of the same thing right like the physical locations uh make it easier to provide access and obviously to showcase the products that we've develop with Partners but the the reality is is that it's more than just the physical location it's more about the ability and ease by which customers and partners can access the labs so we should be expecting a lot of Tito's vodka to be consumed in divorce in Cork at some point might change the national but we need to have some International Space yeah no that's that's that's good to know um Odette on the on the VMware side of things there's a large group of folks who have VMware skill sets correct the Telecom industry is moving into this world of the kind of agility that those folks are familiar with uh how do people come out of the traditional VMware virtualization world and move into that world of cloud native applications and serve the Telecom space What would your recommendation be if you were speaking at a vmug you know a VMware users group meeting with all of your Telecom background what would you what would you share with them that's critical to understand about how Telecom is different or how telecoms spot in its Evolution might be different than the traditional I.T space so um we're talking about the people with the knowledge and the background of yeah I'm a V expert let's say yeah and and I'm looking into the future and I hear that there are 80 000 people in Barcelona at this event and I hear that Dell is building optimized infrastructure for specifically for Telecom and that VMware is involved and I'm I'm an expert in VMware and I want to be involved what do I what do I need to do I know it's a little bit outside of the box question but it's but especially against the backdrop of of uh you know kind of economic headwinds globally there are a lot of people facing transitions what what are your thoughts there so first of all we um we understand the Telco requirements when the standard Taco needs and we make sure that what we learn from the customers what we learn from the partners um is being built into the VMware products and simplicity is number one thing that is important for us we want the customer experience we want the user experience uh to be the same as they know even though we are transitioning into a cloud native networks that require more frequent upgrades and has more they have more complexity to be to be honest and what we do in our vertical inside VMware we are focusing on automation technical Cloud automation Telco cloud service Assurance think of it as a wrapper around the sadt stack that we have from VMware that really simplifies the operations for the tackles because it's really a challenge about you know skill set you need to be a devops SRE in order to operate these networks and things are becoming really complex we simplify it for them with the same VMware experience we have a very good ability to do that you know we sell products in VMware unlike our competition that is mostly selling Professional Services and support we try to focus more on the products and delivering the value of course we have Services offering because telcos requires some customizations but we do focus on Automation and simplicity throughout our stuff so just just follow up so so in other words the investment in education in this VMware ecosystem absolutely can be extended and applied into the Telecom world I think it's an important thing to do and I was just going to add to that the the our engagement in in hotel was also something that we created a Solutions brief whether we were released from Memorial Congress this week this week uh but in conjunction with that we also have a white paper coming out that has a much more expansive uh explanation and documentation of what it was that we accomplished in the work that we've done together and that's not something that was going to be a one-off thing right this is something that will stay Evergreen that we will continue to expand both the testing scope as well as the documentation for what the solution looks like and how it can be used as well as documentation on for the the experts for how they can then leverage and and realize the potential for what we're creating together still look at otel as having the potential to facilitate the continued evolution of the actual Telco industry and if so how well I mean it would be a horrible uh answer if I were to say no to that right I think I honestly believe that one of the most difficult things about this idea of having a disarray ecosystem is not just trying to put it back together but then also how to give yourself choice so each time that you build one of those solution sets like that exists as an island out of all the other possibilities that comes with it right and otel seeks to not just be able to facilitate building that first solution set right like that's what solution engineering can do and that's generally done relatively protected uh and internally the open Telecom ecosystem seeks to to build that for them to also provide the ability to very easily uh change uh specific components of that whether that's a hardware component a Nick whether a security patch just came out or a change in uh in either TCP or TCA or we talked a little bit about for this specific engagement that it was done on TCP 2.5 correct uh they're obviously there's already a 2.7 and 3.0 is coming out it's not like we're going to sit around and write our Pro tails of what 2.7 has happened so this is this isn't intended to be a one and done thing so when we talk about trying to to make that easier and simpler and de-risk all the risks that comes from trying to put all these things together it's not just the the one single solution that you've built in the lab it's what's the next one and how do I optimize this and I have specific requirements as a CSP how can I take something that you built that doesn't quite match it but how do I make that adjustment so that's that's what we seek to do and to make it as easy and uh as painless as possible what's the engagement model with csps is it led by Dell only VMware how does that work so it yeah I can take that uh so that depends on the customer but typically customers they want to choose the cloud vendor so they come to VMware we want VMware typically they come from the I.T side
they said oh we want to manage the network side of the house the same way as we manage the it we don't want to have special skill sets special teams so they move from the IIT to the network side and they want VMware there and then obviously they have an RFP process and they have Hardware choices they can go with them they can go with others we leverage vsphere other compatibility so we can be flexible with the customer Choice and then you know depending on which customer how large they are they select the network equipment provider that runs on top we position our platform as multivendor so many of them choose multiple Network function providers so we work with Dell so assume that the customer is choosing Dell we work very closely with them offering the best solution for the customer we work with them sometimes to even design the boxes to make sure that it fits their use cases and to make sure that it works properly so we have a partnership validation certification end-to-end from the applications all the way down to the hardware it's a fascinating place in history to be right now with 5G something that a lot of consumers sort of assume it's like oh hey yeah we're already there what's what's the 6G thing going to look like well wait a minute we're just at the beginning stages yep and so you talk about disaggregation re-aggregation or reintegration the importance of that um folks like Dell have experience in that space yeah Folks at VMware have a lot of experience in the virtualization space but I heard that VMware is being acquired by broadcom if it all goes through of course you don't need to comment on it but you mentioned something sddc software-defined data center that stack is sometimes misunderstood by the public at large and maybe the folks in the EU I will editorialize for a moment here it is eliminating capture in a way by larger hyperscale Cloud prevent providers it is it absolutely introduces more competition into the market space so it's interesting to hear broadcom acknowledging that this is part of the future of VMware no matter what else happens these capabilities that spill into the Telecom space are something that they say they're going to embrace and extend I think that's important for anyone who's evaluating this when they're if they're if they're concerned well wait a minute yeah I want to when I reintegrate do I want VMware as part of this mix is that an unknown it's pretty clear that that's something that is part of the future of VMware moving forward that's that's my personal opinion based on analysis but you brought up sddc so I wanted I wanted to mention that again I'm not even asking not going to ask you to get into trouble on that at all um what should we be you know kind of from a broad perspective are there any Services outcomes that are going to come out of all of this work the agility that's being built by you folks and folks in you know the open world are there any specific things that you personally are excited about or you know when we think about consumer devices getting data what are the other kinds of things that this facilitates anything cool either one of you so specific use cases yeah anything anything it's got to be cool though if it's not cool okay we're going to ask you to leave all right I'll take that challenge I think one of the things that uh is interesting for something like hotel as it exists as being an open Telecom ecosystem there are going to be some csps that it's very difficult for them to have this optionality existing for themselves especially when you start talking about tailoring it for specific csps and their needs one of the things that becomes much more available to some of the smaller csps is the ability to leverage hotel and basically act as one of their pre-production Labs so so that this would be something that would be very specific to a customer and we would obviously make sure that it's completely isolated but the intention there would be that that it would open up the ability for for you know what would normally take a much longer time period for them to receive some of the benefits of some of the changes that are happening within the industry that they would have immediate benefit by leveraging specifically looking at hotel to provide them with some of their Solutions and I I know that you were also looking for specific use cases out of it but like that that's a huge deal for a lot of csps around the world that don't have the ability to to lay out all the different permutations that they are most interested in and start to put each one of those through a test cycle so a specific use cases for what this looks like is honestly the most exciting that I've seen for right now is on the private 5G networks right uh specifically within mining industry we have a sorry for the audience but we have a demo at our booth that starts to lay out exactly how it was deployed and kind of the the AV of like what this looked like before the world of private 5G for this mining company and what it looks like afterwards and the ability for both safety as well as operational costs as well as their ability to obviously do their job better is is night and day right like it completely opened up a very analog system and opened up to a very digital design system and I would be remiss but I didn't also mention open Brew uh which is also an example in our booth we saw it last night I hope you did so is something it's a small Brewery in in northeast America and we basically took a very manual process of checking temperature and pressure on multiple different tanks along the entire Brewing process and digitized everything for them and all of that was enabled by a private 5G deployment that's built on Dell Hardware you asked for cool I think we got yeah at least for at least for folks from North America right we like our Brew cool exactly guys thank you so much for joining Dave for me talking about what Dell hotel and VMware are doing together what you're enabling csps to do and Achieve we appreciate your time and your insights absolutely thank you all right our pleasure for our guests and for Dave Nicholson I'm Lisa Martin you watching the Cube live from mwc 23 day three of our coverage continues right after a short break [Music]
2023-03-09 17:57
