Deutsche Telekom, AWS, VMware team up to deliver global enterprise network

The global enterprise network approach aims to address customers’ needs for fast and flexible booking, deployment and management of seamless connectivity services across geographically distributed enterprise locations with a unified interface – while benefiting from highly available, trusted services from communications and cloud service providers.

In a proof of concept (POC), Deutsche Telekom with the support of AWS and VMware, Inc. demonstrated a globally distributed enterprise network that combines Deutsche Telekom connectivity services in federation with third party connectivity, compute, and storage resources at campus locations in Prague, Czech Republic and Seattle, USA and an OGA (Open Grid Alliance) grid node in Bonn, Germany.

Together, the three companies showed the capability to federate, abstract and orchestrate geographically distributed compute and connectivity resources for hosting multi-national enterprise services on Cloud and OGA grid nodes, providing global reach with local autonomy. Based on this approach, customers will be able to book connectivity services directly from Deutsche Telekom with a unified interface for service and management of the network across its locations.

The POC demonstrates how the approach supports an optimized resource allocation for advanced AI based applications such as video analytics, autonomous vehicles and robotics. The demonstration use case is video analytics with distributed AI inference.

The setup
The global enterprise network integrates Deutsche Telekom private 5G wireless solutions, AWS services and infrastructure, VMware’s multi-cloud telco platform, OGA grid nodes and Mavenir’s RAN/Core functions. Two 5G Standalone (SA) private wireless networks deployed at locations in Prague, Czech Republic and Seattle, USA are connected to a Mavenir 5G Core hosted on AWS Frankfurt Region leveraging the framework of the Integrated Private Wireless on AWS program. The convergence of the global network with local high-speed 5G connectivity is enabled by the AWS backbone and infrastructure.

The 5G SA private wireless network with User Plane Function (UPF) and RAN hosted at the Seattle location, is operating on the VMware Telco Cloud Platform to enable low latency services. The VMware Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) is also deployed in the same location and serves as the global orchestrator. The SMO framework helps to simplify, optimize and automate the RAN, Core and its applications in a multi-cloud environment.

To demonstrate the benefit of this approach, the deployed POC used a video analytics application where cameras were installed at both Prague and Seattle locations and connected through a private wireless global enterprise network. Using this approach, operators were able to run AI components concurrently for immediate analysis and inferencing. This helps demonstrate the ability for customers to seamlessly connect devices across locations using the global enterprise network. Leveraging OGA architectural principles for Distributed Edge AI Networking, an OGA grid node was established on Dell infrastructure in Bonn facilitating seamless connectivity across the European locations.

Statements
“As AI gets engrained deeper in the ecosystem of our lives, it necessitates equitable access to compute and connectivity for everyone, everywhere across the globe. Multi-national enterprises are seeking trusted and sovereign compute & connectivity constructs that underpin an equitable and seamless access. Deutsche Telekom is excited to partner with the OGA ecosystem for co-creation on these essential constructs and the enablement of the Distributed Edge AI Networking applications of the future,” – Kaniz Mahdi, Group Chief Architect and SVP Technology Architecture and Innovation at Deutsche Telekom.

“VMware is proud to support this Proof of Concept – contributing know-how and a modern and scalable platform that aims to offer the agility required in distributed environments. VMware Telco Cloud Platform is suited to deliver the compute resources on-demand wherever critical customer workloads are needed. As a founding member of the Open Grid Alliance, VMware embraces both the principles of this initiative and the opportunity to collaborate more deeply with fellow alliance members AWS and Deutsche Telekom to help meet the evolving needs of global enterprise customers.” – Stephen Spellicy, vice president, Service Provider Marketing, Enablement and Business Development, VMware.

CT Bureau