Wedoany.com Report-Oct. 22, Wind River, an Aptiv company and global leader in software for the intelligent edge, announced that Vodafone has selected Wind River Cloud Platform as the containers-as-a-service (CaaS) layer for its Open RAN deployments across Germany and other European countries. This collaboration represents a significant expansion of Vodafone’s Open RAN footprint, reinforcing its commitment to developing a more open, flexible, and energy-efficient network architecture across thousands of sites.

Open RAN offers a cloud-based alternative to traditional RAN, enabling service providers to transform business models, reduce operational expenses, improve energy efficiency, introduce new use cases, and enhance customer experience. The Wind River Cloud Platform, built on the open-source StarlingX project, provides a Kubernetes- and container-based distributed cloud architecture for the development, deployment, operation, and servicing of distributed edge networks at scale. It addresses the complex challenge of deploying and managing cloud-native infrastructure for core-to-edge distributed cloud networks while maintaining or exceeding traditional RAN performance in virtualized and Open RAN environments.

Wind River technology spans the entire cloud continuum — from core to far edge — and has been instrumental in multiple global telecom milestones, including the world’s first successful 5G data session on a fully virtualized network, the first commercial Open RAN deployment in Canada, the telecom industry’s largest CaaS platform migration on a 5G Open RAN network, and the first fully automated edge data center for commercial service.

Paul Miller, Chief Technology Officer at Wind River, said: “Vodafone continues to advance and collaborate with the industry in realizing the promise of Open RAN. We’re proud to extend our partnership to enable the next wave of large-scale deployments. Wind River Cloud Platform delivers the scalable, distributed cloud infrastructure service providers need to run next-generation networks efficiently.”

The partnership allows Vodafone to expand its Open RAN deployments efficiently across multiple European markets. By leveraging a cloud-native, containerized architecture, Vodafone can achieve faster rollout, simplified operations, and scalable infrastructure for both current and future network requirements. The collaboration underscores the growing role of cloud-based, open network architectures in supporting energy efficiency, operational flexibility, and advanced service offerings for telecom operators.

This deployment also highlights the increasing importance of distributed edge networks in modern telecom infrastructure. By integrating Wind River Cloud Platform, Vodafone is equipped to handle complex, high-performance network demands while enabling new capabilities such as low-latency applications, dynamic service provisioning, and improved automation.

Overall, this partnership between Wind River and Vodafone strengthens the Open RAN ecaosystem, supporting efficient network management, large-scale deployment, and enhanced performance across core, edge, and far-edge sites in Europe. It demonstrates the strategic value of cloud-native, containerized platforms in next-generation mobile networks and paves the way for continued innovation in 5G and beyond.