Applying “IT cloud” to cellular enables Intranets of Things, integrated enterprise communications

Camberley, UK and Victoria, BC, 15 February 2017 – Quortus and Expeto today announced commercial availability of a unique “platform as a service” (PaaS) solution that gives enterprises and other organizations complete control of their cellular communications. Field trials of the solution are already under way in conjunction with a major multi-national natural resources concern and its cellular network provider, in the Asia-Pacific region.

The solution leverages IT cloud principles, network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN), to provide organizations with secure, high-availability 4G/LTE communications services. By virtualizing the LTE core network in an “edge-cloud” architecture, service providers and their customers can dynamically create virtual LTE networks – or network slices – to serve targeted connectivity needs.

“Edge and cloud computing, virtualization and SDN have always looked like a technologically attractive combination,” said Caroline Chappell, Principal Analyst at Analysys Mason. “The question has been whether they would add up to a compelling customer proposition. I think we’re starting to see a positive answer to that question as companies start to crystalize that promise into services that organizations really need.”

Ryley Mackenzie, Expeto CEO, commented: “Our approach combines the flexibility, security and control that enterprises associate with IT infrastructure, with the robustness and scalability of a virtualized cellular solution. At the heart of our offering is some great technology from Quortus and Expeto. But more importantly is what that technology enables. Communications Service Providers are struggling to move beyond connectivity in their dealings with enterprise customers: enterprises themselves are looking for greater control and ownership of their data. We can help both to achieve their goals.”

Andy Odgers, Quortus CEO, said: “Combining the deployment-proven Quortus EPC with Expeto’s expertise in security, containerization and orchestration within a Platform-as-a-Service deployment model, makes for a powerful solution for a broad range of CSPs – and enables innovative services for enterprise customers. From standalone remote site requirements to massively scalable IoT deployments, we can offer a solution.”

More information on the companies’ collaboration will be available at the Quortus Booth (7C72), and in a demonstration at the Ubuntu Booth (3K31) at Mobile World Congress 2017 (27 February – 2 March, Fira Barcelona).

The Quortus / Expeto solution enables a secure, trusted, dynamically-configurable architecture at the edge of the wireless network with “IT-style” manipulation of traffic. This allows the creation of a virtual network slice per service, and delivers a feature set closely tailored to the requirements of IoT providers and enterprises seeking to optimize their use of mobile technology.

By providing the entire LTE / 4G core network in a PaaS environment, the two companies can offer an optimum combination of cellular and IT-style authentication and security, quality of service and experience. This represents a dramatic shift in the way 4G services are delivered, with the ability to configure network resources at any scale, and to dynamically tailor those resources to service requirements, even down to a per-user basis.

Quortus’ EdgeCentrix (ECX) technology is the basis for a series of software-based cellular core network products that combine carrier-grade robustness with innovations that improve customer experience, enable new services, and reduce operators’ costs. ECX supports emerging mobile edge computing (MEC) architectures and ad-hoc network meshing, as well as VoLTE/SIP voice, packet data and SMS. The products already support many technologies seen as key to 5G evolution, including control/user plane separation (CUPS), dynamic network slicing and SDN architecture.

Expeto has integrated ECX into its Evolved Packet core Integrated Cloud solution (EPIC), a collection of containerized Evolved Packet Core (EPC) services, additional virtualized network functions and an advanced automation and orchestration engine. The complete solution can be deployed in an on-premise, hybrid or cloud environment and on COTS hardware. The architecture allows for commodity cost and scale implementations and service resilience and reliability.