RIC support builds on earlier Google Cloud announcement
AI-based network automation developer P.I. Works announced support for VMware’s Non-Real-Time RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller). The company’s rApps are now interoperable, said P.I. Works.
EVO is an integrated mobile network platform used for planning, management, and optimization, according to P.I. Works. EVO sports a custom ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) framework optimized for big data processing. The company’s Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) based algorithms support 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G networks, covering all the RAN, transmission and network domains.
The EVO platform correlates crowdsourced and geolocated call trace and RF propagation data with customer experience management (CEM) data. The software presents operators with optimization options to improve and maintain mobile user experience, according to P.I. Works.
This new partnership yields a richer set of automation solutions for Communication Service Providers (CSPs) developing Radio Access Network (RAN) disaggregation strategies using Open RAN architecture, said the company.
“As RAN evolves from the current architecture to Open RAN, automated network management via a standardized Radio Intelligence Controller (RIC) will become essential for CSPs in abstracting the complexity of their heterogeneous networks and thus improving customer experience,” said P.I. Works.
“Our collaboration with P.I. Works adds advanced automation and optimization capabilities to RIC platform to help service providers make the most of their RAN modernization efforts,” said VMware’s Lakshmi Mandyam, Vice President of Product Management and Partner Ecosystems, Service Provider & Edge.
P.I. Works CTO Djakhongir Siradjev expressed commitment to open and standardized network architectures, as a means of achieving interoperability and efficiency needed to optimize the customer experience.
“We believe that our collaboration with VMware will pave way for this within the O-RAN ecosystem and drive innovation to build a better, more sustainable future for the industry,” said Siradjev.
P.I. Works announced in May plans to deploy the EVO platform on Google Cloud. EVO will be deployed on Google Cloud to support existing vendors as well as multiple technologies, including more recent use cases such as O-RAN, said P.I. Works.
At the time of the announcement, P.I. Works noted that its new partnership with Google is aimed at enabling 5G transformation. The company singled out 5G network slicing as of particular importance with this new partnership.
“P.I. Works is committed to delivering best-in-class network automation solutions that facilitate this, to mobile operators around the world in order to help them deliver on the promises of 5G. Likewise, offering these solutions on Google Cloud have been key in strengthening our commitment by enabling further cost efficiencies and scalability,” it said.
