If there is one small word you can expect to hear a lot of in the weeks to come, it’s 5G. This, in the wake of the Mobile World Congress taking place in Barcelona on the 25^th, is sure to be a hot topic, if not *the* hot topic.

Indeed, already there are developments on that front with Ericsson and Intel Corporation announcing that they have begun a multi-year collaboration to align ongoing development efforts in software-defined infrastructure (SDI) and Intel Rack Scale Design.

The companies jointly explained that the “resulting next-generation infrastructure management platform will deliver a new level of cloudlike agility, transparency and efficiency required for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), distributed cloud, and 5G.”

What does that mean exactly? In simple terms, it is that the duo are aiming to deliver a next-generation hardware management platform that extends the agility of the cloud to the hardware infrastructure layer. For service providers, the new infrastructure management solution will help speed time-to-market, maximise utilization, and reduce total cost of ownership.

It is that first benefit that general users should most take note of – because it means that the partnership could result in 5G being delivered more quickly from being an emerging technology concept to something that people and businesses can reap the benefits of.  

According to Ericsson and Intel, while many communications service providers have already started transitioning to standards-based servers to reduce infrastructure costs, others need additional management capabilities to streamline operations and fast-track delivery of new services, in order to realize the full potential of their infrastructure.

As part of the collaboration, Ericsson and Intel will converge Ericsson SDI Manager software and Intel RSD reference software while maintaining full backward compatibility for current customers. Jointly-developed software and hardware innovations resulting from the collaboration will be offered in subsequent Ericsson hardware platforms and may also be offered with Intel’s server products which are sold through other partners and in other industry segments.

“5G will be transformative, accelerating today’s applications and triggering a wave of new usages and edge-based innovation. Our infrastructure manageability collaboration with Ericsson will help communications service providers remove deployment barriers, reduce costs, and deliver new 5G and edge services with cloudlike speed on a flexible, programmable and intelligent network,” explained Sandra Rivera, senior vice president, Network Platform Group, Intel.

“We have long history of successful collaboration with Intel. This new collaboration will focus on software in addition to hardware and we see it to be truly transformative for service providers’ ability to successfully deploy open cloud and NFV infrastructure, from centralized data centers to the edge;” added Lars Mårtensson, head of cloud & NFV infrastructure, business area digital services.  

The companies have confirmed that they will show the Ericsson SDI Manager at Mobile World Congress 2019.