NICE, France – Continuing its commercialization of “5G”-oriented products, Nokia released its NetAct Cloud management system, which it said can be deployed in variable data center configurations to help cut cost and speed deployment time.
Peter Patomella, VP of network management and self organizing networks for Nokia’s Applications and Analytics Unit, explained during an interview at TM Forum Live that this is an important step in embracing telco’s movement toward virtualization.
“We’ve been on a journey to really go toward 5G,” Patomella said. “One of those steps is to be able to do a software-only delivery. Until now we’ve done the whole stack. Now, as long as you have the right resources available, you can choose whatever you want in that layer.”
The NetAct Cloud builds on Nokia’s virtualized NetAct product. The vendor also announced the NetAct Fast Pass, which it said allows operators to deploy a network management system in advance of LTE releases, for instance. The sum effect is agility achieved through more rapid feature launches.
Patomella said the tech is being piloted by service providers in the U.S. and Germany.
“We can mange both the network elements,” Patomella explained. “When we talk about 5G, you start talking about ultra-low latency, extremely high, 10 [gigabits per second] throughput on the radio side. That’s what we’re building into NetAct. You have one network management system.”
Bhaskar Gorti, president of applications and analytics at Nokia, said the NetAct Cloud enables operators “to deploy network features faster and work smoothly in cloud environments.”