HPE unveils new telco networking solutions with AI focus

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has unveiled new solutions and partnerships aimed at advancing networking capabilities for telecommunications providers.

The company is prioritising enhanced connectivity solutions to address the growing demands of enterprise customers, particularly in maximising opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI) and Open RAN technology.

These solutions promise to integrate precision timing directly into network infrastructure, improving call quality and data transactions critical for AI workloads.

"We are on the cusp of a transformative technical shift underpinned by data connectivity. The growing prevalence of corporate video broadcasting/streaming, private 5G, cutting-edge robotics, autonomous vehicles and AI are demanding higher throughput and tighter time synchronisation of workloads, pushing existing telecommunications and enterprise networks to their limits," stated Carlos Gallego Gomez, HPE Aruba Networking Chief Technology Officer.

"HPE's solutions tackle this challenge head-on by integrating Precision Time Protocol (PTP) directly into the network fabric. This offering will help businesses meet the demands of today while simultaneously streamlining network infrastructure, security, and management."

Phil Mottram, Executive Vice President and General Manager of HPE Aruba Networking, highlighted the impact of AI on the industry.

He said, "The market inflection that AI presents will have a monumental impact on networking, edge, and data centre innovations for the telecommunications industry."

"With AI opening up new revenue streams, new services, and new capabilities that telcos can provide to their customers, HPE Aruba Networking is continuing our innovation leadership to help service providers build next-generation networks to maximise these AI opportunities. With service providers facing unprecedented network and service demands, HPE is leading the way in redefining the network's role in delivering business value."

The press conference showcased the HPE Aruba Networking CX 8325P network switch, which provides simplified operations and nanosecond accuracy tailored for applications requiring high-speed and low-latency operations such as autonomous vehicles, manufacturing, and robotics.

This switch introduces the industry's first precision timing integration that optimises cellular traffic and AI workloads.

Unlike traditional solutions that rely heavily on satellite communications for timing, HPE's new offerings embed enterprise and telco PTP support within the network, negating the necessity for additional timing hardware while ensuring system redundancy. Will Townsend, Vice President & Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, remarked on this development: "Private cellular networking has great promise in its ability to unlock transformative enterprise use cases, including transportation and logistics. However, many of these applications, including modern AI workload support, rely on precise nano-second timing and ultra-low latency profiles. The HPE Aruba Networking CX 8325P switch is designed to address these challenges by integrating telco-grade timing into the network fabric as well as provides a single operating system to ease management cross-domain to network edges."

Additionally, HPE introduced the HPE ProLiant Compute DL110 Gen12 server, featuring Intel's new Xeon 6 Granite Rapids-D chipset. This next-generation server, highlighted at their booth, is crafted for telco deployments at the network edge, emphasising performance, security, and scalability for Open RAN systems.

HPE and T-Mobile have also announced a partnership to offer a cost-effective, secure networking solution for small businesses. This involves a blend of T-Mobile's Managed 5G Gateway service with products from HPE Networking's Instant On series.

Throughout the event, HPE illustrated its innovations in automating operational processes to cut costs and hasten deployment, and shared insights on equipping data centres to handle AI requirements effectively.