Dell Technologies unveiled new services and an innovation lab designed to simplify and speed deployments of 5G networks, as part of its latest move to unlock fresh revenue opportunities for operators.

The company highlighted the launch of a cloud-native network infrastructure aimed at supporting deployment and maintenance of open, industry-standard infrastructure at scale.

“An open, cloud-native approach is the answer to quickly capture” opportunities in network infrastructure evolution, “and move beyond the hype of 5G to the reality of a resilient next-generation network”, Dennis Hoffman, SVP and GM of the company’s Telecom Systems Business (pictured), said.

As part of the move, Dell also unveiled Project Metalweaver, a software product to make cloud-native infrastructure “automatically manageable, to enable zero-touch provisioning and upgrading”, Hoffman explained.

It will achieve this by letting operators select, deploy and manage thousands of multi-vendor devices across multiple locations.

A new Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab in Texas, presented by Dell, will deliver a space for exploration and collaboration on future telecom technologies and applications.

“This is really the area that we are making it possible for everyone, from independent hardware vendors, software vendors, systems integrators, standard bodies and various consortia, the existing network equipment vendors and a range of other service providers, to come together, test, certify, work on problems and develop solutions that can be delivered”, Hoffman said.

Dell also introduced new reference architectures, spanning telecom core, edge and open RAN environments, built on top of services from VMware and Red Hat.

The launches follow a series of edge compute products the company unveiled in 2020 to target operator needs.