IBM and Cisco partner for 5G network management and orchestration

Andrew Coward, general manager of IBM software defined networking, has announced a new cross-business collaboration between IBM and Cisco. This collaboration will tie the products of both companies together to enable the orchestration and management of virtual 5G networks and the underlying optical and IP networks in a single framework, single solution, driven from any cloud.

Service providers can expect to tie their customer’s cloud services together with a network slice that provides an end-to-end SLA under a single cross-managed network. Over the coming weeks and months, both companies will share how this partnership translates into real-world deployments and how they will in realizing the original vision of 5G networks .

“IBM has been tackling the virtualization orchestration of 5G networks through the deployment of our Cloud Pak for Network Automation product. By automating and then abstracting the complexity of the underlying virtual radio and core network, we present a simplified approach to building network services, up to and including building network slices from the cloud out to the radio edge. Unresolved in this solution was the ability to abstract and provision the underlying transport and IP networks – a requirement to build end-to-end SLAs for network slices and to coordinate traffic across the network,” explained Coward.

He added that Cisco has been addressing the issue of transport and IP network orchestration through Crosswork Network Automation software to manage their network infrastructure.