Ooredoo Kuwait, a leading telecommunications provider in the Middle East, has deployed VMware's vCloud® for NFV platform to support Ooredoo's Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and IT applications on a single, unified cloud, as part of the Operator's UNIFY initiative. The intiative is aimed at leveraging software-defined data center architecture, and disruptive technologies such as NFV and software-defined networking (SDN).
According to VMware, its professional services team partnered with Ooredoo Kuwait and their VNF vendor, Huawei to design and deploy the VMware vCloud and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) VNF in a test environment in less than three months. Upon successful testing, the virtualized IMS was transferred seamlessly to Ooredoo's production IT environment, enabling the Operator to conduct its first Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) call.
Ooredoo Kuwait is adopting a platform-first approach to deploying its first service based on virtualized network functions (VNFs) and commodity off the shelf (COTS) hardware as part of an internal multi-year transformation program.
Mijbil Al-Ayoub, Director, Corporate Comms, Ooredoo Kuwait
The speed at which we have been able to trial our unified cloud and onboard the VoLTE service functions into our IT network has exceeded our expectations. We did a joint R&D project that took only two months to complete, and we finalized the development of our vIMS product that can be deployed in a production, commodity infrastructure, automatically in only 3.5 hours.
David Wright, vice president, Telecommunications and NFV Group, VMware
Ooredoo Kuwait's strategy aligns with VMware's One Cloud, Any Application, Any Device™ strategy, and we're delighted to be working with such forward-thinking customers who understand the value of a platform-based deployment strategy for NFV. By making the decision to deploy and manage a horizontally virtualized platform capable of supporting multivendor VNFs and IT workloads, Ooredoo Kuwait has created a powerful service environment capable of delivering high-value services to customers while managing operational costs.
