Qualcomm is looking to turbocharge and simplify the deployment of end-to-end 5G private networks by teaming with Microsoft.

Among a slew of announcements at MWC22 on Monday, Qualcomm president and CEO Cristiano Amon (pictured) unveiled his company was developing a chip-to-cloud solution that will be paired with Microsoft Azure.

“This is a significant announcement,” Amon said. “It is an easy way to help enterprises scale their 5G ambitions and their edge computing ambitions as well.”

While Qualcomm is also working with Microsoft on the 5G connected PC side with its chips, the network collaboration will combine Qualcomm Technologies’ 5G technologies and hardware ecosystem with Azure private multi-access edge compute (private MEC), including Azure Private 5G Core.

To speed the deployments of private 5G networks, Qualcomm and Microsoft are building pre-validated, private connectivity architectures. According to Amon, working with Microsoft will boost industrial IoT, other enterprise applications and also 5G connected PCs.

Amon also announced that Qualcomm planned to commercialise 5G open and virtualised integrated distributed unit and radio unit solutions with its mmWave performance capabilities to drive the move towards next-generation 5G mobile infrastructures.

On that front, Qualcomm teamed with Fujitsu, within NTT Docomo’s 5G OREC initiative, to address the demands of modern networks, streamline deployments and lower the total cost of ownership by building open RAN-compliant, energy-efficient, virtualised, cloud-native 5G solutions.