Digital twin modeling, powered by artificial intelligence and equipped with new predictive capabilities, is rapidly emerging as a vital solution for strengthening increasingly complex networks. By creating a virtual model of a network in the lab, service providers can more quickly and effectively model network behaviors and outages. TBaaS provides a cloud-based Digital Twin through a suite of tools that enable communications service providers (CSPs) to streamline the evaluation of rApps and xApps prior to partner selection, ongoing CI/CD efforts, deployment, and secure network operations.

With VIAVI's TBaaS and VMware, RIC applications address the need for simulations with realistic data. VIAVI provides geolocation intelligence and xApps/rApps, powered by real RAN data on the VMware RIC platform. This allows a CSP to capture information once and emulate it with multiple other applications, reducing the overhead of repeatedly capturing, processing, and transmitting data. Furthermore, the RAN scenario generator within TeraVM RIC Test enables developers and operators to model scenarios in the lab, either before launch or in environments where large volumes of real data are unavailable. The captured data can also be used to train AI/ML models.

“We are collaborating with VIAVI to ensure that CSPs can benefit in many ways from the power of test automation and enablement,” said Lakshmi Mandyam, vice president of product management and partner ecosystems for Broadcom’s Software-Defined Edge division. “By integrating VMware’s RIC with VIAVI’s TeraVM RIC Test solution and making it available as a service, we are enabling a completely new approach to RIC application development, CI/CD test automation, and benchmarking. Our combined efforts help accelerate CSPs’ network modernization and monetization initiatives.”

“We are very pleased to continue and advance our partnership with VMware, and now with Broadcom, a partner that shares with VIAVI a heritage of decades of innovation, collaboration, and engineering excellence,” said Ian Langley, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Wireless Business, VIAVI. “Our complementary portfolios focus on demystifying the complex environments associated with Digital Twin, and together they provide a wide range of advantages that will help transform and accelerate new network capabilities.”

VMware focuses on attracting and collaborating with a vibrant partner ecosystem to help its operator customers confidently adopt Open RAN with its VMware Telco Cloud Platform and the VMware Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) framework for network programmability and optimization. VIAVI has the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of Open RAN testing solutions and plays a leading role in defining testing processes in the O-RAN Alliance and Telecom Infra Project (TIP).