Samsung and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have sealed a partnership to jointly provide carriers with integrated network functions virtualization (NFV) infrastructure and virtual network functions (VNF) solutions.
Under the partnership, the companies will work together to merge Samsung’s carrier network and HPE’s IT telecoms expertise.
The integrated solutions will help carriers facilitate the transformation of their networks from monolithic, proprietary appliances to cloud-based networks enabled by NFV.
As part of the partnership, Samsung will join the HPE OpenNFV Partner Program as a carrier-grade network equipment provider.
"We see profound potential on joining the HPE OpenNFV Partner Program to ensure a variety of choices for carriers in selecting NFV providers, along with the commercially-proven NFV solution we developed in 2015," said Woojune Kim, vice president and head of strategy group in next generation communication team at Samsung Electronics.
The program is a broad ecosystem of NFV technology, application and service partners that have tested and validated solutions on ETSI-compliant HPE OpenNFV infrastructure.
“HPE and Samsung have already collaborated successfully behind the scenes on NFV projects that are transforming communications service providers and their old school networks to agile telco cloud environments ready to satisfy the ever increasing demands of their customers while reducing cost,” said Werner Schaefer, vice president & general manager, NFV, HPE.
“By formalizing our partnership with Samsung, we further expand our work to bring NFV benefits to the CSP ecosystem.”
The partnership also includes a joint go-to-market strategy with ready-to-install third party solutions. Carriers can choose from various third party offerings, already verified by the HPE OpenNFV Partner Program, such as virtual private-LTE network service, vCPE and SD-WAN.
The pair will also provide telcos with NFV systems integration services to help ensure new technologies are implemented, the companies said.