Wind River Studio and the Digital Transformation

By Nermin Mohamed, Head of Telecommunications Solutions at Wind River 

For over 40 years, Wind River has been powering the safest, most secure devices in the world. Literally billions of devices depend on our technology and we’re not stopping there. Wind River is now a global leader in delivering software for the intelligent edge. The expertise we’ve built up over the years combined with our new Wind River Studio are accelerating the transformation of mission-critical systems, providing increased compute and intelligent edge capabilities while guaranteeing security, safety, and reliability.

Moving to the digital transformation

Other infrastructure software companies have focused primarily on IT and the enterprise. Not Wind River. We’ve been focused for many years on building high-availability software for safety-critical applications in avionics, automotive systems, and defense networks. We know how to scale up and deliver “six nines” availability. Trusted for decades by all the major telecom equipment manufacturers, Wind River software has been deployed in carrier networks worldwide, powering the majority of worldwide 4G and 5G deployments.

The digital transformation has begun as the world moves online for everything from remote work and schooling to global supply chains. Mission-critical intelligent systems will be the bedrock of this transformation across key industries, including transportation, telecommunications, aerospace and defense, and medical technologies. These sophisticated new systems require real-time performance, security, safety, and reliability. They also need the ability to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to support growth areas such as robotics, augmented reality for work and play, and the future of autonomous self-driving cars.

To meet the growing demand for more powerful networks, service providers are focusing on how to roll out better, faster networks in months instead of years. As cloud service providers (CSPs) accelerate their plans, the challenge is to build these networks to be secure and reliable and also ensure they are cost-effective to build and efficient to manage.

CSPs face big challenges

Data is already moving to the cloud-native and intelligent edge model. Gartner predicts that by 2022, more than 50% of enterprise data will be outside the traditional data center or cloud model. Cloud-native infrastructure offers key advantages over traditional models, including faster development cycles, massive scalability, and better redundancy. But moving from traditional networks to the cloud-native model is definitely a challenge for service providers. How do you actually deploy and manage a physically distributed, ultra-low latency cloud-native infrastructure?

What CSPs need are tools that can easily and effectively manage a physically distributed, ultra-low latency, cloud-native infrastructure from core to edge. Let’s look at three key requirements for those tools:

• Automatic deployments and scaling

• Integrated data collection, monitoring, alerts, and reporting

• Unified management and informational dashboards

Answering the challenge with Wind River Studio

The best way to manage cloud-native infrastructure is with cloud-native tools. Wind River knows this, and that’s why we built Wind River Studio as a completely cloud-native suite of tools that focuses on flexibility and efficiency. Wind River Studio is the first and only product that supports the full product lifecycle for mission-critical intelligent systems, from deployments to management, with single pane of glass integration.

How did we do it?

We started with containers and Kubernetes: a system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. These building blocks support the deployment and management of distributed edge networks at scale. Next, we added network analytics technology that includes an integrated data collection, monitoring, and reporting tool to optimize the management and operation of distributed cloud networks. Finally, we included capabilities that support core-to-edge orchestration, providing efficient management and automation of networks, application services, and control of containers, network elements, and edge devices.

Compared with traditional tool suites, Wind River Studio offers dramatic improvements in productivity, agility, and time-to-market with seamless technology integration that includes far-edge cloud compute, data analytics, system-level security, 5G, and AI/ML. Deployed at the network edge, Wind River Studio can improve consumer and enterprise experiences through optimized network performance, enhanced security, and cloud capabilities.

Success story: Verizon 5G

When Verizon wanted to build the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized 5G data session last year, the company turned to Wind River. We worked with them on early adoption of Wind River Studio to roll out nation-wide deployments of virtualized 5G RAN (Radio Access Network).

Let’s team up

Wind River Studio can help you answer the complex challenge of deploying and managing a physically distributed, ultra-low latency cloud-native infrastructure through a single pane of glass. As the leader in 4G and 5G network deployments, we have the knowledge and experience to accelerate your 5G vRAN deployments. We’re here for you, so let’s talk.