Tech Mahindra debuts platform for 5G automation

In an effort to speed up the rollout of 5G, Tech Mahindra announced a new automation and managed services platform today at Mobile World Congress.

Tech Mahindra's netOPs.ai framework is based on continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) principles. It was designed to accelerate 5G adoption by automating key network lifecycle stages such as telco cloud, VNF (virtual network functions) lifecycle automation, and implementation of DevOps continuous integration and service orchestration.  All four areas are key elements, or pain points, in communications service providers' 5G journeys.

Service providers, such as AT&T, have been frustrated with the lack of standardization across vendors' VNFs. Tech Mahindra is looking to speed up the onboarding process and end-to-end integration of VNFs with its VNF-Xchange.

For service orchestration, Tech Mahindra's netOps.ai framework offers automation of network services orchestration, including closed-loop automation for self-healing and auto-scaling. For telco cloud automation, netOps.ai speeds up the rollout of different cloud profiles with one-click deployment capabilities.

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Tech Mahindra's NetDevOps includes the implementation of a complete DevOps CI/CD pipeline for 5G networks in a multi-vendor environment.

“Tech Mahindra’s netOps.ai Framework will significantly boost the speed of 5G network rollouts," said Manish Vyas, president of CME and CEO of network services for Tech Mahindra. "Communication service providers across the globe will be able to accelerate their 5G time-to-market and simultaneously reduce their cost of ownership by automating every aspect of their network lifecycle. We are preparing to witness the real-world impact of 5G and are collaborating with multiple partners from different industry verticals to develop compelling, practical use cases. Service agility, which we aim to provide with our netOps.ai Framework, is essential to rapidly deploy and scale these use cases."

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Tech Mahindra will demonstrate the netOps.ai framework in a fully virtualized, multivendor 5G network and show the benefits of deploying netOps.ai including automated validation of the entire NFV stack—from hypervisors to VNFs— automated software updates, acceleration of end-to-end validation cycles and rapid deployment to production networks.

While Tech Mahindra works with various service providers. It helped AT&T develop the Acumos AI project before it was put into open source at the Linux Foundation. It also resells the telco’s FlexWare network product.