Using caching technology from Akamai Technologies, Ericsson’s Smart Cloud Accelerator, announced Wednesday, is designed to allow operators to improve performance in both fixed and mobile networks.
There are several telecom trends that caching and Smart Cloud Accelerator was developed to address, according to Jan Häglund, vice president and head of IP and Broadband at Ericsson.
Operators want to handle growing data volumes by making their networks more efficient, and caching can help them do that. Content is stored at the edge of the network, which means it doesn’t have to travel across the whole network every time a user wants to access it. That, in turn, means operators can save money, but also better performance for users, according to Häglund.
“Performance characteristics such as reliability and delay can both be improved,” said Häglund.
Operators can use Smart Cloud Accelerator to cache their own content or sell caching services to content providers in the financial industry or the media industry. In the latter case, content providers can also take advantage of Akamai’s extensive network, according to Häglund.
Smart Cloud Accelerator will be rolled out in several stages. At first, Ericsson will offer a stand-alone product, and the during next year the functionality will be integrated into Ericsson’s Smart Services Router (SSR) 8000 family, used to aggregate 2G, 3G, 4G and fixed access traffic.
On Wednesday, Ericsson added the 10-slot SSR 8010 to complement the existing 20-slot SSR 8020, it said.
Ericsson is also looking at the possibility storing the cached content in the radio network, according to Häglund.
Ericsson and Akamai announced that they were going to work together in February 2011.
Smart Cloud Accelerator will complement Ericsson’s portfolio, which consists of the Mobile Cloud Accelerator (MCA) and the Media Delivery Network (MDN). The latter is optimized for video delivery while MCA is solely aimed at mobile traffic and is sold to operators as a service by Ericsson and Akamai.
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