Lenovo and BOCO Inter-Telecom, Mavenir Announce Strategic Partnerships, Committed to Building Full-Stack NFV Solutions

Lenovo signed two strategic partnership agreements, respectively with BOCO Inter-Telecom, a leading vendor of telecommunications network management systems, and Mavenir, a global leader in virtualized network functions.

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Partnering with these two companies, Lenovo is committed to advancing its capabilities in NFV management and orchestration (MANO) and virtualized network functions (VNF). The announcement of these two partnerships represents Lenovo’s latest efforts to build a full-stack NFV product portfolio and push for the convergence of information technology (IT) and communications technology (CT).

Present at the signing ceremonies were Dr. Ying Huang, VP of Lenovo and Head of Enterprise & Cloud Research and 5G Research Labs at Lenovo Research, Mr. Jason Wei, VP and GM of Lenovo Converged Network Business Unit, Mr. Xiaofeng Chen, Board Member, Assistant to the CEO, and CTO of BOCO Inter-Telecom, and Mr. Eddy Lin, VP R&D of Mavenir.

BOCO Inter-Telecom has extensive experience in technology, product development, and large-scale deployment of telco network operations support systems (OSS). Integrating MANO-NFVO/G-VNFM, its NFV OSS-iFOCUS system was Finalist of TMF 2018 IT Transformation Best Solution, and its MANO-NFVO/G-VNFM are leading products in the field.

Mavenir is the industry’s only 100% software, end-to-end Cloud-Native 4G/5G network solutions provider for CSPs and a global VNF leader with vast experience in large-scale commercial NFV deployments. The partnership with Lenovo will focus on bringing Mavenir’s leading technologies into Lenovo’s NFV portfolios for the China market.

Partnering with these two companies and leveraging Lenovo’s industry-leading NFV infrastructure (NFVI) software and hardware products, R&D and services capabilities, and its leadership in the IT industry, Lenovo is well-positioned to create state-of-the-art NFV solutions to serve telco operators and enterprise customers.

Lenovo’s NFV Strategy and Products

Lenovo has been dedicated to building end-to-end converged cloud and communications solutions, ranging from devices to the cloud, hardware to software, and products to services. NFV is the technological foundation and catalyst for the convergence of cloud and communications and the convergence of the IT and CT industries.

Lenovo builds full-stack NFV products, solutions, and services. Its portfolios cover a wide range of NFVI hardware, cloud operating systems, VNF and MANO software.

Lenovo x86 servers have ranked No. 1 globally in terms of reliability and customer satisfaction in recent consecutive years. Lenovo is also continuously developing new products for emerging areas such as 5G, edge computing, and IoT.

With enhancements and optimizations of its enterprise products, such as the cloud operating system, software-defined storage, and hardware management platform, Lenovo has developed leading NFVI software products to meet the most stringent requirements of telco operators in areas such as performance, availability, and manageability.

For VNFs and MANO, Lenovo is developing organic products and partnering with global leaders to jointly build total solutions, as exemplified by the partnerships with BOCO Inter-Telecom and Mavenir.

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Deep Collaboration with Operators, Vendors, and Ecosystem

Lenovo has been an active participant in telco operators’ NFV testing, trials and specification of technology requirements. It has also been collaborating closely with operators and leading vendors, jointly researching and developing new technologies and products.

Lenovo is a platinum member of Linux Foundation Networking and fully embracing open-source technologies and solutions to help telco and cloud service providers transform their networks to achieve greater agility and flexibility.

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona and Shanghai 2018, Lenovo and its partners demonstrated 5G-ready virtualized base stations, industry’s first cloud-RAN solution supporting heterogeneous acceleration hardware and full decoupling of software and hardware, and FPGA-based vBRAS solutions. In early 2018, Lenovo and its partners completed China’s first testing of NFV converged rack solutions.

NFV Industry and Technology Seeing Rapid Development

The industry is converging towards NFV. Many large telco operators announced their NFV plans and some have started commercial deployments. The technical feasibility of NFV has been fully validated in the case of mobile core networks. Virtualization and cloudification of the radio access network (RAN) have also gained significant progress in both technology and industry ecosystems. The global O-RAN Alliance was launched in February 2018, aiming to advance the technology and commercialization of RAN virtualization and cloudification. Lenovo is a core member of the O-RAN Alliance.

Commercial NFV deployments, however, thus far have been limited to the control plane. But virtualization and cloudification of data-plane VNFs is the ultimate key to achieving the core values of NFV, such as cost reduction, service flexibility, and so forth. Lenovo is actively researching this area and has achieved various industry-leading results.

Building upon NFV, Lenovo will extend its leadership and influence beyond the IT industry, leveraging its extensive experience in industry verticals, e.g. manufacturing, education and health, to facilitate convergence of the IT and CT technologies and the two industries. Lenovo is committed to the technology innovation and ecosystem development in diverse areas, such as 5G, edge computing, cloud computing, IoT, enterprise digitalization, smart cities, and smart manufacturing.

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