 theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. Welcome back to Barcelona, Spain, everyone. It's theCUBE live at MWC 23, day three of four days of CUBE coverage. It's like a cannon of CUBE content coming right at you. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson. We've got Dell and VMware here going to be talking about the ecosystem partnerships and what they're doing to further organizations in the teleco industry. Please welcome Jared Woodry, Director of Partner Engineering, Open Telecom Equal System Lab, or OTEL. Odid Solomon is here as well. Director of Product Management, VMware Service Provider, and Edge Business Unit at VMware. Guy, it's great to have you on the program. Thank you for having me. Welcome to theCUBE. So Jared, first question for you. Talk about OTEL. I know there's a big announcement this week, but give the audience context and understanding of what OTEL is and how it works. Sure, so the Open Telecom Equal System Lab is physically located in Ron Rock, Texas. This is the heart and soul of it, but this week we also just announced opening up the Cork Ireland extension of OTEL. What the reason for our existence is to try and make it as easy as possible for both partners and customers to come together and to re-aggregate this disaggregated ecosystem. So that comes with a number of automation tools and basically just giving a known good testing environment so that tests that happen in our lab are as close to real world as they possibly can be and make it as transparent and open as possible for both partners like VMware as well as customers. Oh, then talk about what you're doing with Dell and OTEL and give us a customer example, maybe of one that you're working with or even mentioning it by a high level descriptor if you have to. Yeah, so we provide a telco cloud platform which is essentially a vertical in VMware. The telco cloud platform is serving network function vendors such as Ericsson, Nokia, Mavenir and so on. What we do with Dell as part of this partnership is essentially complimenting the platform with some additional functionality that is not coming out of the box. We used to have data protection in the past but this is no longer our main business focus. So we do provide APIs that we can expose and work together with Dell PPDF solution so customer can benefit from this and leverage the partnership and have overall solution that is not coming out of the box from VMware. I'm curious from a VMware perspective, VMware is associated often with the V in VMware virtualization and we've seen a transition over time between sort of flavors of virtualization. And what is the mix currently today in the telecom space? Between environments that are leveraging what we would think of as more traditional virtualization with full blown Linux windows operating systems in a VM versus the world of containerized microservices. What does that mix look like today? Where do you see it going? Yeah, so the VMware telco cloud platform exists for about eight years. NFV started around that time. You might heard about open stock in addition to VMware. So this has definitely helped the network equipment providers with virtualizing their network functions. Those are typically VNFs, virtualized network functions inside the VMs. Essentially, we have four G applications. So core applications, EPC, we have IMS. Those are typically, I would say, maybe 80 or 90% of the ecosystem right now. 5G is associated with coordinating network functions. So 5G is getting started now, getting deployed. There is an exponential growth on the core side. Now when we expand towards the edge of the network we see more potential growth. This is 5G run. We see the V run, we see the open run. We see early POCs, we see field trials that are starting. We always see as ever production customer now, you just spoke to one. So this is really starting. Cloud native is really starting. I would say about 10 to 20% of the network functions these days are cloud native. Thanks a lot for you. Jerry, question for you. You mentioned data protection, a huge topic there obviously from a security perspective. Data protection used to be the responsibility of the CSPs. You guys are changing that. Can you talk a little bit about how you're doing that and what Dell's play there is? Yeah, so power protect data management is a product that's produced by Dell. So what this does is it enables power data protection over virtual cloud as well as the physical infrastructure of specifically in this case of a telecoms ecosystem. So what this does is enables an ability to rapidly redeploy and back up existing configurations all the way up to the TCP and TCA that pulls the basis of our work here with VMware. So you've offloaded that responsibility from the CSPs. You freed them from that. So the work that we did honestly was to make sure that we have a very clear and concise and accurate procedures for how to conduct this as well. And to put this through a realistic and real world as if it was in a telecoms own production network. What did that would actually look like and what it would take to bring it back up as well. So our responsibility is to make sure that when we provide these products to the customers that not only do they work exactly as their intended to but there is also documentation to help support and to enable them to have their exact specifications that by as well. Got it. So talk a little bit about hotel expansion into Quark. What you guys are doing together to enable CSPs here in the MIA? Yeah, so the reason why we opened up a facility in Quark, Ireland was to give for an MIA audience for an MIA CSPs and ability to look, could feel and touch some of the products that we're working on. It also just facilitates and ease especially for a European based partners to have a chance to very easily come to a lab environment. The difference though, honestly is between Round Rock, Texas and Quark Ireland is that it's virtually an extension of the same thing, right? Like the physical locations make it easier to provide access and obviously to showcase the products that we've developed with partners. But the reality is that it's more than just the physical location, it's more about the ability and ease by which customers and partners can access the labs. So we should be expecting a lot of Tito's vodka to be consumed in Quark at some point. Might change the national beverage. We do need to have some international exchange. Yeah, no, that's good to know. Odette, on the VMware side of things, there's a large group of folks who have VMware skill sets. Correct. The telecom industry is moving into this world of the kind of agility that those folks are familiar with. How do people come out of the traditional VMware virtualization world and move into that world of cloud native applications and serve the telecom space? What would your recommendation be if you were speaking at a VMug, you know a VMware users group meeting with all of your telecom background? What would you share with them that's critical to understand about how telecom is different or how telecom's spot in its evolution might be different than the traditional IT space? So we're talking about the people with the knowledge and the background of it. Yeah, I'm a V expert, let's say. And I'm looking into the future and I hear that there are 80,000 people in Barcelona at this event and I hear that Dell is building optimized infrastructure specifically for telecom and that VMware is involved and I'm an expert in VMware and I want to be involved. What do I need to do? I know it's a little bit outside of the box question but especially against the backdrop of kind of economic headwinds globally there are a lot of people facing transitions. What are your thoughts there? So first of all we understand the telco requirements, we understand the telco needs and we make sure that what we learn from the customers, what we learn from the partners is being built into the VMware products and simplicity is number one thing that is important for us. We want the customer experience, we want the user experience to be the same as they know even though we are transitioning into cloud native networks that require more frequent upgrades and they have more complexity to be honest and what we do in our vertical inside VMware we are focusing on automation, telco cloud automation, telco cloud service assurance. Think of it as a wrapper around the SDT stack that we have from VMware that really simplifies the operations for the telcos because it's really a challenge about skillset. You need to be a DevOps SRE in order to operate these networks and things are becoming really complex. We simplify it for them with the same VMware experience. We have a very good ability to do that. We sell products in VMware. Unlike our competition that is mostly selling professional services and support we try to focus more on the products and delivering the value. Of course we have services offering because telcos require some customizations but we do focus on automation and simplicity throughout our startup. So in other words the investment in education in this VMware ecosystem absolutely can be extended and applied into the telecom world. I think it's an important thing to know. I was just going to add to that. Our engagement in Hotel was also something that we created a solutions brief whether we were released for Mobile World Congress this week. But in conjunction with that we also have a white paper coming out that has a much more expansive explanation and documentation of what it was that we accomplished in the work that we've done together. And that's not something that is going to be a one-off thing. This is something that we'll stay ever green that we'll continue to expand both the testing scope as well as the documentation for what the solution looks like and how it can be used as well as documentation on for the v-experts for how they can then leverage and realize the potential for what we're creating together. Do you just don't look at Hotel as having the potential to facilitate the continued evolution of the actual telco industry? And if so, how? Well, I mean, it would be a horrible answer if I were to say no to that. Right. I think I honestly believe that one of the most difficult things about this idea of having a disparity ecosystem is not just trying to put it back together but then also how to give yourself choice. So each time that you build one of those solutions like that exists as an island out of all the other possibilities that comes with it, right? And Hotel seeks to not just be able to facilitate building that first solution set, right? Like that's what solutions in the area can do and that's generally done relatively protected and internally. The open telecom ecosystem seeks to build that then to also provide the ability to very easily change specific components of that whether that's a hardware component and Nick, whether a security patches came out or a change in either TCP or TCA or we talked a little bit about for this specific engagement that it was done on TCP 2.5. Obviously there's already a 2.7 and 3.0 is coming out. It's not like we're going to sit around and write our coattails of what 2.7 has happened. So this isn't intended to be a one and done thing. So when we talk about trying to make that easier and simpler and de-risk all the risks that comes with trying to put all these things together it's not just the one single solution that you've built in the lab. It's what's the next one and how do I optimize this? And I have specific requirements as a CSP. How can I take something that you built that doesn't quite match it but how do I make that adjustment? So that's what we seek to do and to make it as easy and as painless as possible. What's the engagement model with CSPs? Is it led by Dell, only VMware partner? How does that work? So yeah, I can take that. So that depends on the customer but typically customers they want to choose the cloud vendor. So they come to VMware, we want VMware. Typically they come from the IT side. They said, oh, we want to manage the network side of the house the same way as we manage the IT. We don't want to have special skill sets, special teams. So they move from the IT to the network side and they want VMware there. And then obviously they have an RFP process and they have hardware choices. They can go with Dell, they can go with others. We leverage vSphere, other compatibility so we can be flexible with the customer choice. And then depending on which customer, how large they are, they select the network equipment provider that runs on top, we position our platform as multi-vendor. So many of them choose multiple network function providers. So we work with Dell. So assuming that the customer is choosing Dell, we work very closely with them, offering the best solution for the customer. We work with them sometimes to even design the boxes to make sure that it fits their use cases and to make sure that it works properly. So we have a partnership validation, certification end-to-end from the applications all the way down to the hardware. It's a fascinating place in history to be right now with 5G, something that a lot of consumers sort of assume. It's like, oh, hey, yeah, we're already there. What's a 6G thing that'll look like? Well, wait a minute. We're just at the beginning stages. And so you talk about disaggregation, re-aggregation or reintegration, the importance of that. Folks like Dell have experience in that space. Folks at VMware have a lot of experience in the virtualization space. But I heard that VMware is being acquired by Broadcom if it all goes through, of course. You don't need to comment on it. But you mentioned something, SDDC, Software Defined Data Center. That stack is sometimes misunderstood by the public at large, and maybe the folks in the EU, I will editorialize for a moment here. It is eliminating capture, in a way, by larger hyperscale cloud providers. It absolutely introduces more competition into the market space. So it's interesting to hear Broadcom acknowledging that this is part of the future of VMware no matter what else happens. These capabilities that spill into the telecom space are something that they say they're going to embrace and extend. I think that's important for anyone who's evaluating this when they're, if they're concerned, well, wait a minute. When I reintegrate, do I want VMware as part of this mix? Is that an unknown? It's pretty clear that that's something that is part of the future of VMware moving forward. That's my personal opinion based on analysis, but you brought up SDDC, so I wanted to mention that. Again, I'm not going to ask you to get into trouble on that at all. What should we be, kind of from a broad perspective, are there any services, outcomes that are going to come out of all of this work? The agility that's being built by you folks and folks in the open world, are there any specific things that you personally are excited about? Or when we think about consumer devices getting data, what are the other kinds of things that this facilitates? Anything cool, either one of you? So specific use cases? Yeah, anything, anything. It's got to be cool though, if it's not cool. We're going to ask you to leave. All right, I'll take that challenge. I think one of the things that is interesting for something like OTEL as it exists as being an open telecom ecosystem, there are going to be some CSPs that it's very difficult for them to have this optionality existing for themselves, especially when you start talking about tailoring it for specific CSPs and their needs. One of the things that becomes much more available to some of the smaller CSPs is the ability to leverage OTEL and basically act as one of their pre-production labs. So this would be something that would be very specific to a customer and we would obviously make sure that it's completely isolated, but the intention there would be that it would open up the ability for what would normally take a much longer time period for them to receive some of the benefits of some of the changes that are happening within the industry, but they would have immediate benefit by leveraging specifically looking at OTEL to provide them with some of their solutions. And I know that you were also looking for specific use cases out of it, but that's a huge deal for a lot of CSPs around the world that don't have the ability to lay out all the different permutations that they are most interested in and start to put each one of those through a test cycle. So a specific use cases for what this looks like is honestly the most exciting that I've seen for right now is on the private 5G networks, specifically within mining industry. We have a, sorry for the audience, but we have a demo at our booth that starts to lay out exactly how it was deployed and kind of the AB of like what this looked like before the world of private 5G for this mining company and what it looks like afterwards. And the ability for both safety as well as operational costs as well as their ability to obviously do their job better is night and day, right? Like it completely opened up a very analog system and opened up to a very digitalized system. And I would be remiss, but I didn't also mention open brew, which is also an example at our booth. We saw it last night. We saw it, I hope you did, I hope you did. So open brew is a small brewery in Northeast America. And we basically took a very manual process of checking temperature and pressure on multiple different tanks along the entire brewing process and digitized everything for them. All of that was enabled by a private 5G deployment that's built on Dell hardware. You asked for cool. I think we got it. Yeah, that's cool. I think beer. Cool brew, yes. Beer I think is always gonna be a trump card there. At least for folks from North America, right? We like our brew cool. Exactly, guys, thank you so much for joining Dave and me talking about what Dell, Hotel and VMware are doing together. What you're enabling CSPs to do and achieve, we appreciate your time and your insights. Absolutely. Thank you. All right, our pleasure. For our guests and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from MWC 23. Day three of our coverage continues right after a short break.