Sean McManus, TelecomTV (00:06):
Hello and welcome. I'm Sean McManus from Telecom tv. We've often discussed how networks are becoming more cloud native, scalable and efficient. Two of the companies working together to drive these improvements in the 5G Core and V Ran are Samsung and Red Hat. So to learn more, I'm joined now by Henrik Jansson from Samsung Networks and Laurence Feijt from Red Hat apac.

Hernik Jansson, Samsung Networks (00:30):
Hello.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (00:30):
Thank you for joining me.

Laurence Feijt, Red Hat (00:31):
Thank you.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (00:32):
To start, tell us more about your collaboration in the 5G Core and in V Ran. What makes your partnership special?

Laurence Feijt, Red Hat (00:39):
Yes, so I think that our partnership is really about the coming together of two market leaders to advance 5G core and virtualized one solution through the lens of enhanced automation and integration capabilities. The partnership leverages Red Hat Open source technologies alongside Samsung 5G network expertise to deliver more reliable, flexible and efficient networks to our customers. And from a customer perspective, this partnership is also highly beneficial because they provide the opportunity for our customers to leverage their cloud infrastructure platform to build innovation on top of it related to enterprise 5G to make or even to the ai. Second, it also allows them to deploy the 5G network completely agnostically and across any type of environment including hybrid cloud and multi-cloud settings. And the last point that comes to my mind is obviously the reduced complexity and minimizing the deployment and operational risk through that enhanced automation and integration capabilities.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (02:03):
Thank you. Yes, Henrik.

Hernik Jansson, Samsung Networks (02:05):
So I think Lawrence put it, well, maybe I can just add that we've been working together for about five years now already. We started off with the virtualized core and we've now also done the virtualized rounds. And I think it's important, as Lawrence mentioned, we are doing new prints, we are verifying and so on, and we are two market leaders. I think the platform from Red Hat and the applications from Samsung.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (02:30):
Henrik, tell us how you're working together to support operators in deploying cloud native 5G Core and V ran solutions.

Hernik Jansson, Samsung Networks (02:38):
Right. So I think one important part is that we essentially shared the vision of a fully end-to-end software-based network where you have some standardized hardware, you have a common software platform and uniform tools across, and if you have that, you can simplify your organization, your processes, you can have a more common skillset across different domains and you can have a build a very reliable network. Now if you have that network, you can also easily add things to it. So I think that is very much what this is about.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (03:16):
Now as we know, open source plays a huge part in telecom innovation. How does Red Hat's open source approach compliment Samsung's 5G and vRAN Solutions, Laurence?

Laurence Feijt, Red Hat (03:29):
So first let me say that open source is at the core of everything that we do in Red Hat. As a matter of fact, as the largest open source company in the world, we truly believe that leveraging open source development model are key to making technologies more secure, more reliable, and also more innovative. Open source also drives for more multi-vendor compatibility, supports edge computing for ultra low latency applications. Now putting this back in the context of the Samsung Red Hats partnership, specifically the contribution of Red Hat is really by providing the open source cloud, native, inter and automated cloud infrastructure that will drive the customer innovation and agility.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (04:23):
Let's talk about the benefits that your collaboration delivers. Henrik. Tell us about that.

Hernik Jansson, Samsung Networks (04:29):
Right, so as I mentioned, we share the vision of an end software based network with a common platform across. We verify that solution, so it's also deployed now. So it's a fully proven solution, if you will, for operators to use. It handles both the core network and the radio network and the platform. When we have it, we can easily add things to it as well. So that can be things like virtualized routers, it can be things like AI and so on. So for example, we have our SMO system that also runs a Red Hat. It makes it very simple to deploy, to do analytics, to do optimizations, slicing and so on of the network. Some of that is AI-based and some of it is more traditional, but it kind of shows the stuff you can do if you have this software-based network.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (05:22):
Thank you, Laurence?

Laurence Feijt, Red Hat (05:23):
Yes, so just to add on and compliments what Henrik was saying, I would say that we are collaborating together to support the constant need for a service provider to validate their network functionality performance, multi-vendor interoperability of their end-to-end 5G networks. And the joint blueprint that we developed together really aims at providing an end-to-end virtualized solution to our customers that reduces that complexity and operational and deployment risk. What it also does is to provide a platform that is future proof and that can easily adapt to the rapid changing market needs. And additionally, also I think that our collaboration is really a great testimony of the scale of the challenges that Red Hat's ES partner ecosystem is able to handle, right? Because with our partners we are able to provide choice at every architectural level of the solution, which is something that is really valued by our joint customers.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (06:48):
We all love to hear about real world applications. So I was wondering if you could share an example where a customer has deployed Red Hat and Samsung's 5G Core and V RAN solutions. And it will be particularly interesting to hear about the outcomes from this,

Hernik Jansson, Samsung Networks (07:03):
Right? I think the best example is KDDI in Japan. They have Red Hat. They want to have Red Hat across is their platform of choice. They deployed Samsung's virtualized core network and we are now also starting to deploy the virtualized round for them. And really the outcome is that enables them to have the platform of choice, put all the workloads that they want on that then really get this end software-based network with all the benefits that we talked about earlier.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (07:33):
Looking ahead now, how do you see this collaboration evolving? What can customers expect in terms of future innovations and enhancements? Mars?

Laurence Feijt, Red Hat (07:41):
Yes. So we can definitely expect to see the partnership evolving towards greater automation, more cloud native advancements, as well as more AI driven optimization. As customers are accelerating their journey towards fully patronized and virtualized network, red Hat will remain the reliable platform for Samsung 5G cutting edge applications. So looking ahead, I think that customers can definitely expect a few things. First one is to see deeper integration of AI ML to support scenarios related to predictive analytics, to intelligent network automation as well as self-healing networks. The second thing relates to edge computing becoming even more critical and more prominent with the enhanced support of virtual low latency applications, private 5G networks, AGI driven use cases. And the third thing relates to network slicing and all the advancements that are done in that area that will allow for more tailored and differentiated service delivery. And last but not least, is really related to security enhancements that are supported in a Red Hat security framework. And that will be critical into making network more resilient and robust. Robust.

Sean McManus, TelecomTV (09:20):
Thank you very much. It has been fantastic to hear about how you're working together today. Thank you both for joining me.

Hernik Jansson, Samsung Networks (09:26):
Thank you.