Red Hat & Fujitsu Expand AI-Ready vRAN Collaboration

Red Hat, Inc., a global leader in open source solutions, has announced an expanded collaboration with Fujitsu to deliver an AI-ready virtualized radio access network (vRAN) solution utilizing Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s premier hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes. Fujitsu has selected Red Hat OpenShift as its preferred hybrid cloud platform to provide a cloud-native, AI-capable vRAN solution. This initiative aims to enhance service providers’ efficiency, optimize network performance, and facilitate the expansion into diverse applications with greater consistency and flexibility.

Through this collaboration, Red Hat OpenShift will serve as the foundation for Fujitsu’s O-RAN O-Cloud-based solution—a cloud-native platform designed to support virtualized and containerized open RAN functions, accompanying software components, and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads for RAN. Managing RAN at scale, often encompassing thousands of sites within a service provider’s network, necessitates advanced automation, flexibility, and security capabilities. By adopting Red Hat OpenShift as the unified platform for Fujitsu’s vRAN solution, customers can benefit from:

• Advanced orchestration and automation: Red Hat OpenShift facilitates zero-touch provisioning and integrates built-in automation, assisting service providers in managing next-generation RAN networks at any scale on a common platform.

• Ultra-low latency and enhanced performance: Deploying Fujitsu’s vRAN on Red Hat OpenShift, particularly on ARM servers, offers a more power-efficient alternative, enabling service providers to achieve lower latency, deterministic processing, and dedicated hardware acceleration for improved network performance.

• AI-ready vRAN: Red Hat OpenShift empowers service providers to unlock new revenue opportunities by scaling with enhanced security capabilities and managing virtualized, cloud-native, and AI-enabled applications on a single, unified platform.

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By leveraging Red Hat OpenShift as a common cloud platform, service providers can achieve up to a 40% reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) through improved resource sharing, productivity, and automation implementation. Fujitsu’s vRAN on Red Hat OpenShift aligns with open compute standards established by the O-RAN Alliance for RAN and O-Cloud architecture, delivering an integrated solution driven by open source innovation and community contributions.

Honoré LaBourdette, vice president of Global Telco Ecosystem at Red Hat, stated, “The future of RAN is AI, and it is powered by cloud-native technologies. With this collaboration, Red Hat and Fujitsu are helping service providers realize the full potential of RAN, encompassing virtualized, containerized, and AI workloads across sprawling network footprints, to achieve new levels of enhanced network performance and optimization.”

Masaki Taniguchi, Head of Mobile System Business Unit at Fujitsu Limited, commented, “We are pleased to extend our longstanding collaboration with Red Hat to deepen and broaden RAN capabilities for service providers in today’s AI era. Red Hat OpenShift offers an open, highly scalable cloud-native platform to deliver critical flexibility and integration for RAN, enabling service providers to meet rising network demands with greater ease and efficiency.”

This collaboration underscores both companies’ commitment to advancing open, scalable, and efficient solutions in the telecommunications industry, paving the way for innovative applications and services in the AI-driven era.