Teased at Dell Tech World, OneBox MEC targets private networks; companies call out healthcare, retail, construction industries
After teasing a potential collaboration focused on mobile edge computing during Dell Tech World last year, it’s now official: Korea’s SK Telecom, Dell Technologies and VMware are working together on OneBox MEC, billed as “a single box approach that provides enterprises with an integrated, private 5G and edge computing platform.”
During the virtual event in October, SK Telecom’s Kangwon Lee, vice president of the 5GX Cloud Labs, discussed the relationship between 5G and mobile edge computing and detailed the operator’s two-pronged approach to delivering consumer and enterprise services that combine 5G and MEC.
“The first is distributed edge,” Lee said. “In this case, we can deliver a nationwide edge cloud service to all 5G users. The second scenario is on-site edge. In this case, we can deliver low latency and security-sensitive services at enterprise customer sites such as smart factories and hospitals. At SK Telecom we believe MEC is a critical capability that can provide new experiences to our 5G customers with ultra low latency and extremely high data rates.”
The focus of OneBox MEC address the latter enterprise-focused use of mobile edge computing and 5G. According to a press statement, OneBox MEC incorporates Dell EMC’s PowerEdge XE2420 server, VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform, and SK Telecom’s 5GX MEC Platform.
DT’s VP of Market Development David Trigg said the partnership “will deliver 5G-enabled edge computing solutions, to give enterprises new options to quickly act on data where it resides,” and builds on “completed proofs of concept deployments designed to optimize 5G and edge computing content delivery and user experience.”
Citing research from STL Partners commissioned by Dell, SKT, VMware and Intel, the partners note that 40% of enterprises had “issues with the latency of their current networking solutions.” More specifically, for a patient monitoring in a hospital setting, “61% of those surveyed experienced performance issues, and 45% expressed reliability concerns.” Data security was another problem called out by survey respondents.
SKT’s VP and Head of 5GX MEC Product Lee Dong-kee called out opportunities in healthcare, retail and construction. “With OneBox MEC, our enterprise customers will be able to launch MEC-based services in a speedy manner…We will flawlessly support ultra-low latency services by combining the strengths of 5G and MEC to accelerate innovations for companies in diverse areas.”
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