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Keysight and IBM Ink Deal to Accelerate European Open RAN Deployments

Sept. 9, 2022

IBM aspires to integrate Keysight solutions with its Cloud Pak for Network Automation in IBM's Center of Excellence.

As Open RAN seeks to gain a foothold in the telephony infrastructure arena, it’ll need boosts from big players. To that end, Keysight Technologies has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with IBM to pursue accelerating open radio-access-network (RAN) deployments in Europe.

IBM plans to use Keysight Open Radio Architect (KORA) solutions in the company's Open RAN center of excellence (CoE), established in 2021, to help mobile operators drive innovation to meet the standards defined by the O-RAN Alliance. IBM intends to integrate Keysight's software-centric open RAN test, measurement, and emulation tools with IBM's Cloud Pak for Network Automation, an AI-powered telco cloud platform that enables the automation of network operations.

Kalyan Sundhar, vice president and general manager for Keysight's wireless network access business, said, "The integration of Keysight's open RAN test solutions with IBM's Cloud Pak for Network Automation will help service providers in automating applications that are critical to delivering a wide range of connectivity services."

Based in Madrid, Spain, IBM's CoE enables communications service providers (CSPs) to deploy IBM solutions in their laboratory environments or live networks to support private and industrial applications. IBM's CoE aims to advance digital transformation in the telco industry and is supported by IBM Consulting.

Keysight's open RAN solutions will support IBM in demonstrating O-RAN solutions to CSPs seeking partnerships. These open RAN solutions will enable vendors to verify conformance, interoperability, performance, and security, resulting in the deployment of fully interoperable RAN equipment. IBM's CoE intends to use Keysight's radio unit simulator, RuSIM, to validate O-RAN distributed units (O-DUs); CoreSIM, to verify the performance of open RAN equipment; and Nemo Wireless Network Solutions to optimize and monitor wireless networks.

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David Maliniak | Executive Editor, Microwaves & RF

I am Executive Editor of Microwaves & RF, an all-digital publication that broadly covers all aspects of wireless communications. More particularly, we're keeping a close eye on technologies in the consumer-oriented 5G, 6G, IoT, M2M, and V2X markets, in which much of the wireless market's growth will occur in this decade and beyond. I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, developers, and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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In his long career in the B2B electronics-industry media, David Maliniak has held editorial roles as both generalist and specialist. As Components Editor and, later, as Editor in Chief of EE Product News, David gained breadth of experience in covering the industry at large. In serving as EDA/Test and Measurement Technology Editor at Electronic Design, he developed deep insight into those complex areas of technology. Most recently, David worked in technical marketing communications at Teledyne LeCroy, leaving to rejoin the EOEM B2B publishing world in January 2020. David earned a B.A. in journalism at New York University.