Orange eyes cloud native networking gains with Red Hat deal

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Orange has signed a deal with Red Hat to enhance the underlying common telco cloud foundation for Orange International Networks, unifying its containerized and virtual network functions.

As part of the move, Orange will transition its services to a cloud native infrastructure based on Red Hat platforms, with Red Hat OpenShift now forming the foundation for cloud native network functions.

The partnership will also see Orange incorporate Red Had OpenShift virtualization tools, while the open source giant's Ansible Automation Platform will enable fully automated deployment and scaling across the network.

Orange said the aim is to create a vendor-agnostic cloud native and automation framework for its international telco cloud infrastructure.

The firm is also eying up a range of potential use cases, from SD-WAN and SASE gateway, to IMS, 4G and 5G core, IoT and roaming services. So far, it has successfully deployed six new points of presence (PoPs) to run live on the platform.

"We have recently selected Red Hat OpenShift for our next generation of telco cloud, and our move to containerization," said Jean Louis Leroux, executive vice president, international networks, Orange, and chief technology and innovation officer, Orange Wholesale.

"We are very happy with the first deployments and are moving forward to cover the globe with this new technology. We are ready to host advanced telco services, such as SD-WAN, IoT, voice and mobile core within 10 milliseconds of any customer."

Orange is expecting some big benefits from the new platform, including greater availability and operational efficiency, with improved lifecycle management, an easier upgrade process, and 'near-zero' downtime.

The telco giant also anticipates improvements in terms of flexibility, scalability, and future-readiness, along with a faster time to market via fully automated deployment and scaling and zero-touch provisioning.

Orange targets network resilience gains

Orange specifically highlighted improved resilience with infrastructure as code (IaC) following the deal with Red Hat, along with greater security capabilities through network and container isolation and controlled access to applications.

Orange said it’s on track to increase its common telco cloud infrastructure based on Red Hat OpenShift to 75 telco cloud PoPs around the world over the next two years, migrating from its existing 50 OpenStack platforms and deploying 25 new PoPs.

With sustainability in mind, it said, it will be able to reuse existing equipment and take advantage of the power monitoring capabilities in Red Hat OpenShift to reduce its carbon footprint.

"The Orange and Red Hat teams have built a close collaboration over the years based on transparency and simplicity. We’re delighted to see Orange unlocking significant benefits in stability, resilience and time to market with the use of Red Hat technologies," said Fran Heeran, vice president, global telecommunications at Red Hat.

"Orange is a best-practice example of harnessing end-to-end automation and cloud-native orchestration to target large scale deployments and workload migration to modern infrastructure with the help of Red Hat."

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Emma Woollacott is a freelance journalist writing for publications including the BBC, Private Eye, Forbes, Raconteur and specialist technology titles.