Orange Demos 5G Network Slice Management with HPE, Casa Systems

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced an innovative technical demonstration of automated 5G network slice orchestration conducted with Orange and Casa Systems.

Creatively illustrated using a kit robot, the demo highlights the expanding use cases and service agility needed to support 5G business applications, including location-based, telemetry, IoT, edge computing and more that will require low-latency for both the uplink and downlink.

In collaboration with HPE and Casa Systems, Orange demonstrated the ability for a cloud-native 5G core network to recognize quality-of-service (QoS) degradations on a common network slice for a mission-critical service or application with specific service level agreement (SLA) parameters and automatically self-correct by creating a new dedicated network slice on-demand.

“Our robot demo underscores how a cloud-native, software-defined 5G network will support latency-sensitive business use cases with automatic detection and migration to a dedicated network slice to meet the strictest SLAs for mission-critical applications,” said Emmanuel Bidet, VP, Convergent Networks Control, Orange. “This is a new step forward marking the emergence of the real-time enterprise as companies now expect to use data as soon as it is produced from sensors, cameras, robots and other devices and services to power digital transformation strategies. We are proud to have achieved this project with HPE and Casa Systems, two leading companies in the open 5G solutions market.”

In the demo, a robot is fitted with a 5G radio and connected to the robot’s management software over an open 5G core network, comprising cloud-native Network Functions from both HPE and Casa Systems. HPE’s Service Director orchestration software creates, configures and deploys network slices for the robot’s service to connect at low latency. The demo shows the service set up and the robot operating normally until additional data traffic and latency are introduced and the robot’s performance is visibly impacted. This triggers an alarm and Service Director works with the 5G core network within seconds to create and deploy a new dedicated network slice with the proper QoS restoring the robot to normal operation.

“This demonstration with Orange and Casa underscores our ability to automate and orchestrate the complete lifecycle of 5G services in cloud-native, multi-vendor environments,” said Domenico Convertino, Vice President Product Management, Communications & Media Solutions, HPE. “An open 5G Core is key for operators to break out of the single vendor lock-in of previous generation networks. The HPE 5G Core Stack, as well as our newly announced HPE 5G Lab, enable an accelerated evolution to 5G networking that is open and interoperable.”

“Our cloud-native 5G core network functions powered by our Axyom™ software platform is designed to enable a next-generation of mobile networks that are more flexible, scalable and automated with the high performance and low latency to support a variety of consumer and business devices, services and use cases,” said Jerry Guo, CEO, Casa Systems. “More importantly, this demo underscores the ability of major operators to build 5G networks using best-of-breed solutions from multiple vendors that are tailored to their specific needs instead of being locked into legacy infrastructures and network migrations.”

Orange, HPE and Casa are now expanding this use case demonstration into an end-to-end campus trial as the next steps toward broader service availability.