Headquartered in Paris, France, Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, with 285 million customers and 128,000 employees globally. With operations in 26 countries, the company offers a wide range of services, including mobile, fixed broadband, and telecommunications solutions for enterprise customers.
Orange Telco Cloud (OTC) is an open, scalable, and flexible Private Cloud infrastructure based on the Sylva framework. It offers a robust and scalable infrastructure tailored for hosting critical network functions and deploying and operating VNFs and CNFs. It is designed and supported by Orange Innovation Networks with a flexible horizontal operating model following customer needs.
At-a-Glance
To support the development of a new generation of shared, interoperable network infrastructure for the telco industry, Orange uses SUSE ATIP (Adaptive Telco Infrastructure Platform) to manage and secure Kubernetes clusters at startup speed and enterprise scale. Through its partnership with SUSE, Orange is contributing to open, industrywide projects such as Sylva, cutting time-to-market for innovative edge services and enhancing the scalability and security of cloud native network functions.
SUSE and Orange Transform Telco with Open Source 5G Networks
“With ATIP, SUSE offered us the technology we needed to implement the CAPI bootstrapper on our Kubernetes nodes, enabling us to manage 100% of our cloud deployments with Kubernetes.”
The journey to cloud native network functions
The telco industry is poised for transformation. In the past, operators deployed their networks using physical network functions (PNFs): network appliances comprising costly and complex proprietary hardware. In recent years, operators have replaced a significant amount of the legacy PNF estate with virtual network functions (VNFs): virtualized applications that deliver key network functions.
While VNFs have many advantages over PNFs, the resulting sprawl of virtual machines still requires significant management and maintenance. As operators now look to deliver new use cases such as 5G Core Distributed User Plane Function and cloud-based Open Radio Access Networks at the edge, VNFs represent a drag on agility, efficiency, and innovation.
The next phase of transformation in the telco sector is the widespread adoption of cloud native network functions (CNFs). By shifting network functions from virtualized environments to a containerized architecture, operators will be able to address new use cases at speed and scale.
As one of the world’s leading network operators, Orange is at the forefront of the CNF transformation. Along with 26 other major industry partners, the company is playing a key role in Sylva: a project to create a cloud software framework tailored for telco and edge requirements, alongside a reference architecture and validation program for real-world technical deployments.
Through Sylva, Orange and other project participants aim to: break the industry’s dependence on costly proprietary systems by leveraging open source technology; reduce operating costs through shared, interoperable network infrastructure; and comply with stringent regulatory requirements around information security and data governance.
Philippe Ensarguet, VP Software Engineering & Orange Expert Technical Forum Chairman, says, “Along with our telecom industry peers, we are pushing to move from a highly vertical ecosystem to a truly horizontal one.”
From the outset, Orange and other Sylva participants decided that open source technologies in general, and Kubernetes in particular, would play a key role in underpinning the new CNF stack. As a result, it was essential to find an effective way to manage and secure Kubernetes clusters at scale.
Why SUSE solutions?
Orange’s journey to SUSE ATIP began with an earlier project: Pikeo. An end-to-end cloud native 5G standalone multi-cloud network, Pikeo acted as a proof-of-concept for edge computing use cases such as smart factories — allowing thousands of data points to be captured from instrumented equipment in real time.
SUSE ATIP played a key role in the company’s rollout of Pikeo to multiple sites across Europe. Thanks to ATIP’s open, enterprise-class container management platform, Rancher Prime, Orange was able to deliver a consistent approach to deployment through every part of the Kubernetes lifecycle.
Ensarguet confirms: “With Pikeo, the idea was to release true CNF services for 5G. To manage the lifecycle of these services, we started our work with SUSE around Rancher Prime — helping us drive innovation and enhance our agility.”
Building on its experience with Pikeo, Orange decided to leverage Rancher Prime to underpin the first beta release of Sylva.
“There are several ways to manage cloud native deployments, but we wanted to use as much native Kubernetes functionality as possible,” says Ensarguet. “To achieve this goal, we decided to leverage Kubernetes Cluster API [CAPI] to provision our clusters. With Rancher Prime, SUSE offered us the technology we needed to implement the CAPI bootstrapper on our Kubernetes nodes, enabling us to manage 100% of our cloud deployments with Kubernetes.”
To date, the company’s contributions have led to the development and release of multiple versions of the Sylva stack, including container-as-a-service (CaaS) solutions for virtual and bare-metal server deployments.
The impact of SUSE solutions
Meets stringent regulatory requirements
As providers of critical national infrastructure, Orange and other Sylva participants must meet stringent regulatory requirements in areas such as information security and data governance.
With Rancher Prime, Orange can deliver out-of-the-box compliance with industry best practices — including the Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).
With a built-in GitOps engine, Rancher Prime also helps Orange to protect clusters against drift and subsequent loss of compliant status. And with NeuVector Prime container security from SUSE, the company can further mitigate risk through effective vulnerability management for the whole container lifecycle.
Maintains open source transparency
By leveraging open source technologies from SUSE, Orange is taking a leading role in the telco industry’s transition from VNFs to CNFs.
“The benefit of working with open solutions is that there are no secrets. If there are flaws, we can evaluate the risk and the potential security impacts,” comments Ensarguet. “With SUSE, we have the assurance of a reliable, trustworthy, and committed open source technology partner that is used to working in high-security environments.”
Cuts time-to-market for new services
By embracing Rancher Prime for container orchestration and management, Orange is enhancing its operational efficiency, streamlining its deployment processes, and achieving a shorter time-to-market for new services.
For example, the company has already leveraged SUSE solutions to support the launch of Orange Telco Cloud. A 100% cloud native solution, Orange Telco Cloud is managed with Rancher Prime and delivers on-demand points of presence (PoPs) — enabling ultra-low-latency services including SD-WAN and 5G roaming.
What’s next for Orange?
With open and secure SUSE solutions at the heart of its new multi-cloud networks, Orange is fostering greater collaboration with industry peers and partners and pioneering the development of a new generation of telco solutions. To accelerate the global transition from VNFs to CNFs, the company plans to leverage KubeVirt technology to help it rapidly containerize network applications currently deployed on virtual machines.
Ensarguet concludes: “What impressed us most about working with SUSE wasn’t the technology, because we already knew the technology was very, very good; it was the way that the whole SUSE team was totally committed to working with us. SUSE is a trusted partner for the Sylva ecosystem, working with Orange and other telcos to support the industry shift to cloud native solutions.”