Cisco Launches Ultra Services Platform to Automate Mobile Cloud

BARCELONA -- Deutsche Telekom is creating a multi-country mobile cloud. SK Telecom of South Korea is automating new service creation in minutes versus days, and bringing network control to one place. They are doing it with the Cisco Ultra Services Platform, which formally launches today at GSMA Mobile World Congress.

Cisco Ultra is a complete, virtualized, feature-rich, mobile services platform that helps mobile operators launch and deploy new services faster and more efficiently. Benefits include:

A software-defined networking (SDN) distributed network: It applies SDN to separate control and user plane functionality. User plane functionality can be distributed close to the radio access network, allowing data to shortcut to the Internet. This can help save up to 35 percent of backhaul costs.

Service creation and control can be centralized, allowing operators to be more agile

Massive scale: In its first release, the system is tested to over two terabytes per second of traffic handling capacity, and over 20 million connections.

Time to revenue: It simplifies and speeds the introduction of new services, from Connected Car to enterprise private mobile networks.

Automated deployments: It automates the deployment of services through an easy to use user interface. Deployment intervals can be reduced from months to minutes, and deployment costs can be reduced by 30 percent or more.

It helps reduces total cost of ownership up to 30 to 35 percent.

It utilizes and enhances the Cisco family of world-class virtual applications including packet core, policy, security and more.

It is open and extensible: Ultra can easily integrate with third-party components. A full member of the Cisco Open Network Architecture and Evolved Services Platform, Ultra can easily onboard any of the more than 100 virtual applications in the virtualized network functions portfolio, plus third-party virtual applications.

Rapid Time-to-Market of Hybrid Cloud and SaaS Offerings
Ultra is deployable over public, private, or hybrid clouds, and may be combined with Cisco SaaS solutions like Infinite Video, Spark, and others.

5G Capabilities Today
Ultra makes 5G capabilities like control and user plane separation (CUPS) and network slicing available today. Operators can take advantage of these features without having to wait for end-to-end 5G.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)