Lenovo + Red Hat: Meeting telcos’ NFV needs with an OpenStack platform

Red Hat and Lenovo have a history of working together to deliver open source solutions that meet the critical security and reliability requirements of businesses. The two companies are at it again. Lenovo recently announced an initiative, to develop integrated open source solutions specifically for the telecommunications industry. These solutions will provide the backbone for rich mobile content, 5G networks and IoT workloads, according to Lenovo, and Lenovo says it plans to work with Red Hat to develop a certified solution stack based on Red Hat’s network function virtualization (NFV) platform, built on Red Hat OpenStack Platform.

The integration of Red Hat NFV platform with Lenovo’s Open Platform@Lenovo (OP@L) expands on our strategic collaboration announced in 2015 that was aimed at enterprises. Then, we jointly producing a reference architecture for deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform on Lenovo x3650 M5 and x3550 M5 servers. Check out the full reference architecture we released in 2015.

Now, the two companies are collaborating to develop and deliver open and flexible solutions for service provider clients, as well as those in other industries. Lenovo says its OP@L will include Red Hat’s software stack for NFV and run on hardened, OCP-compliant infrastructure. OCP is the Open Compute Project, an industry group led by Facebook that is working to design, use, and enable mainstream delivery of the most efficient designs for scalable computing. Leveraging OP@L, Lenovo said it plans to advance open NFV architectures that can be customized and are highly secure to address the demanding needs of service providers.

As Darrell Jordan-Smith, VP for Telco, Red Hat, said in Lenovo’s release unveiling the initiative, Red Hat is excited about our growing relationship around NFV and Telco. “We look forward to working within the new Lenovo Open Platform@Lenovo (OP@L) framework to deliver the certified solutions that help Telco customers modernize their infrastructures, embrace new technologies, and deliver new services to their customers,” he said.