New Delhi [India], Jan 17 : Industry leaders in the development and delivery of networking and mobility Ericsson and Cisco Systems have announced to transform and virtualize Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA)'s networks for VHA to better prepare for new emerging services and to evolve its core network to increase the level of agility and programmability from network slicing.

Through simplification of its network and infrastructure, VHA will benefit from having the tools to become more agile, innovative and more pro-active in the way services are brought to market, ultimately resulting in improved customer engagement experience alongside reductions in opex and capex spend.

The deal represents the first major collaboration between Ericsson and Cisco on Telecom Cloud infrastructure.

"Ericsson and Cisco are our existing providers of core and routing functions making them good partners to move into a virtualized environment. This transformation allows us to introduce new applications to drive innovation and improve customer services and user experience. The new infrastructure opens the door to new business models and markets, such as Internet of Things for Vodafone we are excited about the future prospects this partnership offers," said Chief Technology Officer VHA, Kevin Millroy.

"This major transformation deal clearly demonstrates Ericsson's global end-to-end transformation and operations capabilities as a trusted transformation partner. As the first collaboration between Ericsson and Cisco on Telecom Cloud infrastructure, it also shows how our global partnership is speeding digital transformation for customers across industries," said Head of Region North America, Rima Qureshi who is also responsible for the strategic partnership with Cisco at Ericsson.

"As the Prime Integrator, Ericsson is taking responsibility for integration of the Ericsson and Cisco, not only building the infrastructure, but ensuring the delivery of an end-to-end operational system," added Qureshi.

The joint architecture solution comprises of Ericsson Hyperscale Datacenter System and software components such as Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment, Ericsson Cloud Manager, Cloud SDN controller; together with Cisco WAN Automation Engine, Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO), Cisco IP Network VNFs including IOS XR 9000v and Cloud Services Router 1000v, amongst others.

The partnership of the two countries will offer customers the best of routing, data center, networking, cloud, mobility, management and control, and global services capabilities.

The next-generation strategic partnership will drive growth, accelerate innovation, and speed digital transformation demanded by customers across industries.

To date, over 250 active customer engagements have now started to turn into won deals. More than 60 deals, spread around the world, are in IP (routing and transport) and services. The companies announced deals with three Italy, Vodafone Portugal, Aster Dominican Republic and Cable and Wireless in Caribbean in 2016. (ANI)