Wind River, an edge software provider, announced an exciting collaboration with Rakuten Symphony. This partnership is set to boost the adoption of Open RAN technology, providing more flexibility to telecommunications operators. The collaboration enhances the partner ecosystem for Open RAN 4G and 5G solutions, supporting the Wind River Studio Operator and its recently released open-source eLxr Pro Linux solution.
The two firms tested their collaboration with an end-to-end proof of concept. This consisted of Rakuten Symphony’s Open RAN 4G and 5G standalone virtual Distributed Unit (vDU) and virtual Central Unit (vCU) running on Wind River’s platform. “Rakuten Symphony’s Open RAN solution provides a software fabric that is field-hardened for performance and optimization, covering both LTE and 5G technologies. This enables true pre-proven Open RAN choice on chosen common platforms,” explained Wind River in a press release.
According to Raghunath Hariharan, chief technology officer at Rakuten Symphony, customers will benefit significantly from this collaboration. He shared, “By expanding our partner ecosystem to Wind River, we deliver on the promise of providing additional choice to all customers as they accelerate their journey toward Open RAN.” The partnership promises increased flexibility to enterprises as they develop solutions for near-edge networks.
The technology behind this collaboration is designed for intelligent edge, far edge, near edge, regional data centers, and public cloud deployments. Wind River’s eLxr Pro gives enterprise clients long-term support, security updates, and professional services. Additionally, the Wind River Studio Operator provides a cloud-native, Kubernetes- and container-based architecture to support distributed edge networks, facilitating core-to-edge cloud networks management.
Paul Miller, CTO of Wind River, emphasized the advantages of integrating eLxr Pro into Rakuten Symphony’s cloud portfolio. This merger caters to cloud-to-edge deployment requirements and enables operations of high-performance workloads on Wind River’s platform. “Together with Rakuten Symphony, we are delivering a powerful combined stack that increases flexibility and choice,” Miller said. This integration aims to streamline transitions to cloud and Open RAN architectures, empowering Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to unlock new monetization avenues.
