Quortus to showcase deployable mobile edge computing platform and 5G-aligned MEC demonstration at MEC Congress
Healthcare PoC features 5G network slicing, CUPS, SDN; enterprise service delivery platform enables presence-based services, local offload and IoT-style connectivity
20th September 2016, Camberley, UK – At this week’s Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) Congress in Munich, Quortus will showcase a broad range of its MEC capabilities, including a deployable platform for enterprise applications, and a ground-breaking proof-of-concept (PoC) that includes innovative 5G-aligned features.
In the ETSI MEC PoC Zone, the company, along with partners Argela and Turk Telekom, will for the first time show a forward-looking proof of concept (PoC) for healthcare applications that features 5G network slicing and control/user plane separation (CUPS) to illustrate how highly differentiated services can be defined and deployed. The Intel booth will feature a deployable MEC platform created by Quortus, ACS and Stratacache, enabling presence-based services, fixed mobile convergence and breakout to local enterprise applications.
“We’ve been deploying edge intelligence in real-world networks for years now,” said Andy Odgers, Quortus CEO. “At MEC Congress we are continuing that approach, focusing not just on mobile edge computing technology, but on the ability of that technology to transform service delivery, enhance quality of experience and diversify the communications ecosystem.”
The PoC demonstration, titled ‘Healthcare – Dynamic Hospital User, IoT and Alert Status Management’, shows a typical healthcare use-case, deploying edge intelligence and dynamic network configuration capabilities to optimize communication services in a hospital environment. It leverages Quortus’ years of experience in the field of enterprise edge-of-network deployments in an approach that enables innovation while aligning with the initial architecture framework proposed by the ETSI MEC ecosystem. The PoC leverages a number of advanced technologies, including being the first MEC PoC to feature 5G-aligned network slicing and control/user plane separation (CUPS) to show how highly differentiated services can be defined and deployed.
The PoC envisages allowing a hospital to assign a cellular access hierarchy to local systems depending on managed access rights. It enables users to be prioritized depending on hospital ‘alert’ status, dynamic hospital-managed upgrading of users between categories, and dynamic response to critical incidents with modifications to radio resource allocations.
Andy Odgers commented: “Technologies included in these demonstrations such as network slicing and split user/control plane architectures not only show the viability of MEC in the context of critical vertical applications, but will also go on to be key features of future networks such as 5G. We are excited to demonstrate these developments at the world’s leading MEC event.”
The joint ACS/Quortus/Stratacache platform, first unveiled at Mobile World Congress in February 2016, is the first services-focused MEC solution for Enterprise applications. The MEC Congress demonstration shows user presence tied to responsive digital signage, fixed mobile convergence and breakout to local enterprise applications. The platform also enables local PBX integration with short code dialing, and enables completely local communication between two terminal nodes: for example, interconnecting a security camera and video viewer.
Quortus is a pioneer of MEC technology and network virtualization and has been at the forefront of moving core functions and intelligence to the network edge since 2009. Its award-winning EdgeCentrix technology was the first EPC to be MEC-aligned and includes a number of advanced features that push intelligence to the edge of the network. The company continues to forge ahead with service-oriented technology developments in the MEC arena. In May it announced a collaboration with Lime and Canonical, to create a fully programmable mobile network capability. More recently it co-operated with Expeto, whose expertise in security, Platform-as-a-Service deployment model, and containerization and orchestration, enables powerful solutions for the wireless ecosystem. These include the capability to create secure, trusted network architectures at the network edge, with IT-style manipulation of traffic.
Quortus expects to be able to report project findings for its healthcare PoC to ETSI in December 2016. More details about the PoC are available via the ETSI MEC Wiki.
