VMware announced innovations and expanded partnerships across its service provider and edge product portfolios to meet the evolving needs of Communications Service Providers (CSPs) and enterprises.

"It's a time of change for service providers as they modernize their networks and monetize their services," said Sanjay Uppal, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider and Edge, VMware. "Meanwhile, enterprises are seeking more secure, reliable, and better delivery of apps, data, and services to the edge for branch offices, factory floors, clinics and retail stores. At Mobile World Congress 2023, we're announcing innovations to help our customers with their transformation efforts by delivering multi-cloud solutions for service providers and enhanced networking and security capabilities to support the needs at the edge."

Enabling CSPs to Modernize their Networks to Leverage the Power of 5G

VMware today showcased deployment of the VMware Telco Cloud platform by CSPs as well as product advancements and an expanding partner ecosystem. Highlights include:

• VMware introduced innovations and enhanced offerings to help CSPs more quickly modernize their networks. VMware unveiled its vision for the Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) framework, which follows the O-RAN alliance's approach of simplifying, optimizing and automating the RAN and its applications; and a new technical preview that will allow CSPs to complement VMware ESXi by running disaggregated and virtualized RAN functions directly on a bare metal server with VMware Tanzu.
• Additionally, VMware is providing next-generation networking within VMware Telco Cloud Platform with VMware NSX delivering telco-grade intelligent networking and lateral security capabilities. With recent advances, including the DPU-based acceleration announced last August, VMware offers accelerated networking and security performance for VNFs and CNFs, while enhancing network observability and increasing the host resources available to applications. VMware announced the availability of DPU-based acceleration of lateral security features like distributed firewall and distributed intrusion detection and prevention along with energy efficiency use cases for 4G/5G core load balancing needs.

Enhanced Mobility, Connectivity and Choice for Enterprises

VMware also announced it is delivering new and enhanced edge connectivity and intelligent wireless capabilities to its SD-WAN and SASE customers. Highlights include:

• VMware is now inviting select customers and partners to evaluate the VMware SD-WAN Client across remote user and edge device use cases. VMware SD-WAN Client is expected to be available in VMware's Q1 FY24.
• Real world tests have shown VMware SD-WAN can provide over more than 40% improvement in QoE for voice and video applications when using satellite and cellular. In addition to delivering higher application quality, the platform enables higher network utilization through adaptive thresholds designed from real-world learnings from more than 100,000 cellular and satellite connections in use today by VMware customers.
• VMware introduced a VMware Certified Professional education program and certificate for VMware SD-WAN and SASE to help partners and customers identify professionals with the skills and expertise necessary to effectively deploy and manage VMware SD-WAN solutions.