FYUZ 2023 took place in Madrid, Spain from October 9 to 11, 2023. This global symposium brought together leading companies and visionaries moving the industry forward with open and disaggregated solutions. It provided a unique platform to explore the latest advancements and highlight industry momentum in areas like Open RAN and 5G. 

Aarna.ml played an influential role at the event with Bhanu Chandra, Sr. Member of Technical Staff, participating in 3 thought leadership panels in partnership with NTT Data and the TIP ROMA working group. Bhanu covered the crucial role of LCM Automation for application and Infrastructure, underscored the transformative power of disaggregation for 5G components like O-RAN SMO, and addressed challenges when building CI/CD/CT automation.

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Alongside Bhanu, Subramanian Sankaranarayanan, our AVP of Business Development & Alliances, met with customers and partners.

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We'd like to thank the event organizers and sponsors and look forward to the next one.

Visit the Aarna.ml solution pages to understand how we are approaching Private 5G, Edge Multicloud Networking, Cloud Adjacent Storage, Edge Cloud Machine Learning, O-RAN SMO, and Telco Cloud.

Missed your chance to meet with us at the show? Please contact us to arrange a meeting. 

“Nephio is disrupting the industry with a dramatically simplified framework and R1 represents a significant milestone in this journey. By automating cloud infrastructure, network functions, and potentially edge applications together, Nephio is transforming network service delivery,” said Amar Kapadia, Co-Founder and CEO, Aarna.ml.

With this vision in mind, Aarna.ml hosted an illuminating meetup on September 28, 2023, in Bangalore focused on the Nephio project. The event attracted professionals from notable organizations such as Samsung, Tata Communications, AccuKnox, and others, all seeking insights into this groundbreaking technology.
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The event commenced with Sandeep Sharma, Principal Architect at Aarna.ml, taking the stage to highlight Nephio's pioneering features, functionalities, and its application. His presentation offered attendees a comprehensive understanding of Nephio's transformative potential.

Following this, Rahul Jadhav, representing AccuKnox, contributed his expertise on leveraging Nephio for intent-driven security automation. In a digital landscape where security stands as a paramount concern, Rahul's insights underscored Nephio's critical role in enhancing security measures.
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The event continued with Sandeep Sharma and Rahul Jadhav reconvening to explore potential collaboration points and the future trajectory of Nephio. Their discussions not only provided valuable information but also ignited engaging conversations regarding Nephio's multifaceted applications across various industry segments.

Sriram Rupanagunta, CEO of Aarna.ml, brought the event to a close by leading an open discussion. This session enabled participants to raise questions and share their perspectives, fostering an environment of collaboration and shared learning. It emphasized the event's core theme of collaboration.

Nephio's potential to simplify the deployment and management of multi-vendor cloud infrastructure and network functions across large scale edge deployments is promising.

Get the presentation slides from the event here.

We hope you will join us at the next Aarna.ml meetup; if you haven't already, please join the meetup group here.

Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Las Vegas for 2023 concluded on September 28, 2023, having drawn over 8,000 attendees from 200 countries and a wide range of industries, including Telco, AI, Network Infrastructure, Network Security  and smart cities. Aarna.ml CEO Amar Kapadia was in attendance meeting with partners, customers, and others in the edge orchestration community and ecosystem.

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                                                                                                                                      Source: MWC LAS VEGAS 2023

5G at the Forefront: Attendees were immersed in the latest 5G developments — exploring new use cases, services, and the challenges and opportunities surrounding 5G network deployment and management — while the path to 6G has already begun. Increasingly prominent are use cases highlighting Private 5G.  

The Metaverse Emerges: The metaverse is a virtual realm that is still in its infancy but holds the potential to transform how we interact with our surroundings and each other. The networks making the metaverse possible rely on technologies like Edge Multicloud Networking  and Cloud Adjacent Storage. Attendees had the unique opportunity to firsthand experience the metaverse through captivating demos and immersive encounters.

Open RAN Ecosystem Grows: Several leading companies made news at the show including Rakuten Symphony announcing a new partnership with AWS, Qualcomm announcing that its open RAN chipsets are already in trials by operators with plans for commercial open RAN networks in 2023, and NEC opening an Open RAN innovation hub for in North America. Open source components like O-RAN SMO will be critical for management and orchestration of O-RAN networks. 

Visit the Aarna.ml solution pages to understand how we are approaching Private 5G, Edge Multicloud Networking, Cloud Adjacent Storage, Edge Cloud Machine Learning, O-RAN SMO, and Telco Cloud.

Missed your chance to meet with us at the show? Please contact us to arrange a meeting. 

The TM Forum Digital Transformation World (DTW) 2023 event, held from September 19-21 in Copenhagen, Denmark, was a resounding success. The event brought together over 600 companies and 3,500 delegates from over 90 countries to discuss the latest trends and developments in the telecommunications industry. Subbu, Aarna’s Global Head of Sales, was in attendance and kept busy collaborating with our partners and customers. 

DTW 2023 was a showcase of the industry's commitment to innovation and transformation. The event featured a wide range of sessions, keynotes, and panel discussions on topics such as:

• The convergence of telecommunications and cloud computing
• The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in transforming the telecommunications industry
• Data engineering, machine learning, and AI
• Cloud computing and open digital architectures
• Future networks and technologies such as 5G, edge computing, and network slicing
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Highlights of DTW 2023

• The announcement of a new TM Forum Open Digital Architecture (ODA) reference implementation, which will help telecommunications companies to accelerate their digital transformation. 
• The launch of a new TM Forum Innovation Hub, which will help telecommunications companies to collaborate on and solve the industry's biggest challenges.
• The recognition of over 30 telecommunications companies and vendors for their commitment to TM Forum standards and best practices.
• The presentation of the TM Forum Excellence Awards, which recognize the most innovative and transformative projects in the industry.

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‍Speakers and Panelists

DTW 2023 featured a number of keynote speakers and panelists from leading telecommunications companies, vendors, and industry organizations. 

1. Rajeev Suri, President and CEO, Nokia: Suri spoke about the importance of collaboration and innovation in the telecommunications industry. He also highlighted Nokia's commitment to developing 5G and other emerging technologies.

2. Pat Gelsinger, CEO, Intel: Gelsinger discussed the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in transforming the telecommunications industry. He also highlighted Intel's commitment to developing AI-powered solutions for telecommunications companies.

3. Safra Catz, CEO, Oracle: Catz spoke about the importance of cloud computing in the telecommunications industry. She also highlighted Oracle's commitment to providing cloud solutions that can help telecommunications companies accelerate their digital transformation.

4. Ruza Sabanovic, EVP & Chief Technology Officer, Telenor: Sabanovic discussed the challenges and opportunities facing telecommunications companies in the 5G era. She also highlighted Telenor's commitment to building a sustainable and innovative future for the telecommunications industry.

5. Kelvin Chua, Deputy General Manager, Cloud Network Operation Dept., China Mobile: Chua shared his insights on how China Mobile is using cloud computing to transform its network operations. He also discussed the challenges and opportunities of operating a 5G network at scale.

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Future Outlook

The telecommunications industry is at a crossroads. New technologies such as 5G, AI, and cloud computing are creating new opportunities for innovation and growth. However, telecommunications companies are also facing increasing competition from new entrants and the need to transform their businesses in order to meet the changing needs of their customers.

DTW 2023 showed that the telecommunications industry is committed to innovation and transformation. The speakers, panelists, and exhibitors provided a glimpse into the future of telecommunications, and it is clear that the industry is poised for continued growth and innovation in the years to come.

Visit the TM Forum website to watch the DTW keynote speeches and panel discussions on demand for complete event information.

Visit the Aarna.ml solution pages to understand how we are approaching Private 5G, Edge Multicloud Networking, Cloud Adjacent Storage, Edge Cloud Machine Learning, O-RAN SMO, and Telco Cloud.

Missed your chance to meet with us at the show? Please contact us to arrange a meeting. 

The Nephio project – seeded by Google and now hosted by the Linux Foundation – has received a lot of attention lately based on its first release (R1) which was announced in August. More than 70 network operators and vendors around the world have now signed up to the project and the developer community has meetups planned in Mountain View and Bangalore coming up soon. 

Nephio uses an open source platform that has already transformed the software technology landscape, Kubnernetes, to automate the deployment and management of cloud infrastructure, and network functions. Nephio is intent-based, meaning that it automates a network operator’s intent into configurations and container-based deployment of services. But the real genius of Nephio, I believe, is the way it simplifies network service delivery for operators – something lacking in previous, open source approaches. 

Leveraging our deep experience with Nephio, Aarna.ml last month announced a commercial Nephio support package, Aarna Nephio Support 1.0 (ANS). Now, to make it even easier for users to deploy, configure, and manage Nephio, Aarna.ml is offering a Nephio packaged version that includes the following:

• A Nephio kickoff consultation with primary stakeholders
• A two hour Nephio workshop to educate and empower operational teams
• Upstream Nephio R1 demonstration environment installation on vSphere, OpenStack, AWS, Azure, orGCPDevelopment of network device controllers as needed (additional charges will apply)
• Development of package specializer controllers as needed (additional charges will apply)
• Conversion of helm to KPT packages for customers who have kubernetes based offerings with helm packages (additional charges will apply)
• One year of 8x5 operational and maintenance support for one test/dev environment

If your organization wants to get hands on with Nephio, but is uncertain how to get traction and begin testing, this is a great way to get started. This special offer is now being offered at the significantly discounted rate of $50,000. Interested parties are encouraged to move quickly as engagements at this price level must be initiated before the end of 2023. 

‍Contact us to get started today.

Part of working in open source means following a number of open standards and participating in a number of open source projects in order to look for opportunities to make upstream contributions. While not as direct as working in proprietary silos, we’ve always looked to open source as many contributions as possible; not only for Aarna’s benefit, but for the benefit of the community and our partners aligning to the same standards and projects. In this blog, I will give a quick overview of the ETSI SOL005 interface support that was upstreamed to the Linux Foundation Networking (LFN) open source EMCO project and our AMCOP product. 

What is the ETSI SOL005 standard? 

SOL005 is part of the standards defined by ETSI NFV industry standards group, and defines Interfaces related to Network Service Management and VNF onboarding towards OSS/BSS (Operations Support System / Business Support System) fulfilling the requirements defined in ETSI NFV IFA013. 

We decided to implement a subset of SOL005 in AMCOP which is limited to Lifecycle management, Subscription, Notification, and fault management APIs. This is to make sure we can support a wide range of applications (OSS/BSS) from our customers or partners who would like to interface their products with AMCOP. 

The SOL005 is layered on the EMCO component of AMCOP. EMCO (Edge Multi-Cluster Orchestrator) is one of the components of AMCOP, which is an open source project under the umbrella of Linux Foundation Networking (LFN). EMCO is a universal control plane and application orchestrator for Kubernetes. EMCO acts as a framework for intent-based deployment of cloud native applications to sets of Kubernetes clusters, spanning enterprise data centers, multiple cloud service providers, and multiple edge locations.

We at Aarna have been an active member of the EMCO community, and contributed several features to the EMCO code base. The SOL005 layer has been contributed upstream, and it has been integrated into Aarna’s AMCOP product since the last major release (version 3.3). 

The following diagram gives an overview of how SOL005 is implemented on AMCOP/EMCO.  

The architectural objectives of the SOL005 interface is to provide a standardized interface for OSS/BSS software, to perform the following: 

• Orchestrate Network Services consisting of Cloud-native and Virtual Network Functions
• Perform LCM operations of Network Services
• Fault Management of Network Services
• (Roadmap) Performance Management of Network Services
• (Roadmap) Capacity Management of NFVI (Kubernetes)

For example, one of our partners uses SOL005 interface to integrate their software with AMCOP, which acts as an NFVO (NFV Orchestration), to orchestrate 5G network services and workloads that are cloud native or virtualized. 

The SOL005 code is all upstream now in the EMCO repositories. 

https://gitlab.com/project-emco/core/emco-base  

https://gitlab.com/project-emco/ecosystem/solsvc

Please let us know if you have any questions by contacting us here.