Aarna Networks has recently joined the ONUG Collaborative and took the opportunity to meet the community in-person in New York City, Oct 24-25 at the ONUG Fall 2023 event.

ONUG hosted a showcase of essential cloud solutions, covering connectivity, security, automation, and control; as well as highlighted the latest in Network as a Service (NaaS) and enterprise 5G solutions, exploring new approaches to these new marketing opportunities. We were please to learn that Stephen Collins, who shared the speaking stage with Brandon Wick last spring at the Big 5G Event in Austin, has come on as CTO of the ONUG Collaborative. Stephen brings decades of industry experience, a deep knowledge of tech and 5G, and an uncanny ability to bring people together to collaborate and get things done. Aarna Networks is excited to dig in and explore the Private 5G and Hyperautomation workstreams to produce thought leadership, market enablement, and technology projects to move industry forward.

Amar Kapadia and Brandon Wick were at the show and enjoyed conversations with our friends at Rysun Labs and 5G Open Innovation Labs, as well as initial conversations with large enterprise end users like Ernst & Young, FedEx, Citi, Cigna, and others. For us, it's imperative to get feedback on our positioning, offerings, and features from the enterprise end users themselves who leverage our technology to manage, orchestrate and automate their networks. We look forward to digging deeper with ONUG members and collaborating to overcome the challenges and pain points underlying digital transformation.

Aarna Networks is proud to be members of the 5G Open Innovation Lab (5G OIL) and were in their first batch of startups. We're working with the 5G OIL on a new Private 5G initiative... stay tuned!

Lastly, we enjoyed a very insightful Keynote "Exploring Generative AI & Large Language Models: Maturity, Policy, and Enterprise Implementation" by Andy Brown, CEO, Sand Hill East, LLC; and Phil Tee, CEO of Moogsoft (recently acquired by Dell), exploring maturity models in AI & LLMs-Enterprise Implementation; and the challenges, opportunities, and strategies for Supporting and Protecting AI & LLMs within Enterprise. Some interesting takeaways were the ideas that every pre-2015 company is "disruptable" and that K->Phd educational journeys will be shortened by 10 years. Stay tuned for this exciting keynote and others to be posted on the ONUG YouTube channel.

Aarna Networks is diving into the world of GenAI for Enterprises with a packaged offering through a secure, private, tunable, fully managed Large Language Model (LLM). Learn more here.

For those companies active in ONUG who we did not have a chance to meet, please contact us and we would love to get acquainted.

On October 19th, 2023, Aarna Networks hosted an enlightening webinar that brought forward the transformative potential of Generative AI (GenAI) for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) We feel that the industry is now  poised to achieve significant breakthroughs in network insights, leading to both operational savings and the creation of innovative revenue streams.
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The event's clarion call emphasized the pressing need for A key takeaway from the event was for CSPs to start exploring GenAI today and not wait for the perfect use case.. Echoing this sentiment was a recent statement from Bain & Company: “Speedy action trumps perfect planning here. It’s more important for telcos to quickly launch an initial set of generative AI applications that fit the company’s strategy, and do so in a responsible way—or risk missing a window of opportunity in this fast-evolving sector.” 
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Participating in the webinar were Roy Chua of AvidThink, Vamshi Ambati representing PredEra, Srinivasa Addepalli from Aryaka, and Amar Kapadia, Aarna Networks' own Co-Founder & CEO.
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Here’s a sample of key questions addressed during the webinar:

Q: Will tier 1 telcos develop their own LLMs or adapt pre-trained models?

A: The inclination leans towards harnessing pre-trained models, refining them for specific enterprise needs.

Q: How do smaller companies compare against the industry titans in this sphere?

A: Smaller entities offer niche solutions, agility, and bespoke services, giving them a unique edge against the larger players.

Q: If everyone is leveraging standard LLMs, where lies the differentiation?

A: Distinctiveness emerges from model customization, varied applications, and the unique data inputs each company integrates.

Q: Does GenAI's capability extend beyond offline tasks to real-time enterprise edge applications?

A: While its prowess in offline tasks is evident, there's an increasing interest in GenAI's potential for real-time applications.
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To delve into the insights shared during the session, watch the full webinar on Aarna Networks' YouTube Channel.
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Getting Started

Aarna Networks and Predera have partnered to offer a secure, private, fully managed large language model to help you explore the world of generative AI. Choose from a variety of foundational models that you can fine tune with your corporate data to discover new insights and revenue generating opportunities. Learn more.

The cloud computing landscape is on the cusp of a seismic shift, with IDC forecasting that cloud services will soon surpass the remarkable milestone of $1 trillion USD. In this dynamic environment, it's no surprise that over 75% of enterprises are either already in the process of adopting or planning to embrace multi-cloud strategies starting in 2024.

As we look ahead, several trends are emerging as driving forces and new opportunities in this transformative wave. In this blog we’ll take a closer look at one of these key strategies — cloud adjacent storage.

Cloud Adjacent Storage at the Edge

The prediction that data creation is expected to reach 180 zettabytes by 2025 underscores the incredible growth in the volume of data being generated globally due to various factors such as 5G, FWA, big data, and AI.

This rapid increase poses challenges for traditional data storage and management approaches in the cloud, especially multi-cloud approaches that create complexity, security concerns, and governance questions. Another challenge is cost overruns, especially in egress costs can spike under changing usage conditions. 

A solution to this can be found in distributed edge computing where data processing and storage are brought closer to the location where data is generated, rather than relying solely on centralized cloud data centers.

As shown in the above diagram, the combination of Equinix Metal and PureStorage FlashBlade colocation solutions offers a compelling approach to address the evolving data landscape. Equinix Metal and PureStorage solutions via Aarna Edge Services (AES) connect to the three public clouds and toolsets allowing for optimal edge storage adjacent to the cloud with low latency and stateless spot instances. 

Critical Infrastructure and Workload Automation

Managing and optimizing multiple cloud environments is a daunting task that incurs additional OPEX, such as hiring staff skilled in multi-cloud, or training  existing IT teams. These tasks slow down cloud adjacent storage adoption and optimization strategies. 

Recognizing this need, Aarna Networks began the development of Aarna Edge Services (AES) in 2022. AES is a SaaS platform that simplifies management and orchestration of edge storage and multi-cloud connectivity infrastructure over the Equinix and Pure Storage platforms. It leverages policy-driven automation to simplify the deployment, configuration, and monitoring of cloud-native infrastructure and high-performance computing (HPC) stacks. This allows organizations to focus on their AI workloads without getting bogged down in infrastructure management. 

Aarna Edge Services (AES)

AES automates the provisioning of multi-cloud AI workloads, ensuring they run efficiently across cloud-native technologies. This flexibility allows for the utilization of stateless CPU and GPU cloud spot instances on-demand, optimizing resource usage. This also  simplifies the integration of off-the-shelf, mature cloud-based AI and big data solutions,  enabling organizations to tap into advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and big data tools without the complexities often associated with big data and AI application stack implementation. This of course leads to more data and more use of storage (a virtuous cycle in our case). 

AES Beta testing has shown the ability to optimize enterprise cloud spending by more than 50%. This cost efficiency is achieved by intelligent resource allocation and dynamic utilization of cloud spot instances when available, reducing overall cloud expenses while maintaining high levels of reliability, performance, and security.

Learn more about Aarna’s Cloud Adjacent Storage Solution. 

Learn more about Aarna Edge Services.

From October 9-11, Google played host to the Nephio R2 Technical Summit 2023 in Mountain View, CA. Following the successful R1 Summit, there was considerable anticipation for this event, and Aarna Networks was proud to participate. 

The summit offered attendees a chance to reflect on R1's milestones while also introducing the goals of R2 (especially in O-RAN). A notable topic of discussion was Nephio's growing role in infrastructure management and its potential broader application for enterprise. Another point of interest was the collaboration between Nephio and GenAI, orchestration of ML using Nephio, and also using GenAI to make Nephio easier to use.
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Sandeep Sharma, Nephio TSC Member, gave a talk "Bare-metal Provisioning with Nephio," where he covered Nephio enhancements for bare-metal provisioning and insights for optimizing infrastructure orchestration. Get the slides here.

Amar Kapadia, Aarna Network's Co-Founder and CEO, led an exploratory session on the possibilities for Nephio in enterprise use cases such as LLM Orchestration, Security Orchestration (AccuKnox), Process automation (Ubicity), and IoT (MicroShift/Portainer/K0s/K3s). Other potential areas of integration are with the OpenTofu and L3AF projects. Get the Slides here.
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Leveraging our deep experience with Nephio, Aarna Networks recently announced a commercial Nephio support package, Aarna Nephio Support 1.0 (ANS). Now, to make it even easier for users to deploy, configure, and manage Nephio, Aarna Networks is offering a Nephio packaged version. Learn more in the blog post from Amar Kapadia. 

If you couldn't connect with us at the event, feel free to contact us to arrange a meeting.

FYUZ 2023 took place in Madrid, Spain from October 9 to 11, 2023. This global symposium brought together leading companies and visionaries moving the industry forward with open and disaggregated solutions. It provided a unique platform to explore the latest advancements and highlight industry momentum in areas like Open RAN and 5G. 

Aarna Networks played an influential role at the event with Bhanu Chandra, Sr. Member of Technical Staff, participating in 3 thought leadership panels in partnership with NTT Data and the TIP ROMA working group. Bhanu covered the crucial role of LCM Automation for application and Infrastructure, underscored the transformative power of disaggregation for 5G components like O-RAN SMO, and addressed challenges when building CI/CD/CT automation.

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Alongside Bhanu, Subramanian Sankaranarayanan, our AVP of Business Development & Alliances, met with customers and partners.

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We'd like to thank the event organizers and sponsors and look forward to the next one.

Visit the Aarna Networks solution pages to understand how we are approaching Private 5G, Edge Multicloud Networking, Cloud Adjacent Storage, Edge Cloud Machine Learning, O-RAN SMO, and Telco Cloud.

Missed your chance to meet with us at the show? Please contact us to arrange a meeting. 

“Nephio is disrupting the industry with a dramatically simplified framework and R1 represents a significant milestone in this journey. By automating cloud infrastructure, network functions, and potentially edge applications together, Nephio is transforming network service delivery,” said Amar Kapadia, Co-Founder and CEO, Aarna Networks.

With this vision in mind, Aarna Networks hosted an illuminating meetup on September 28, 2023, in Bangalore focused on the Nephio project. The event attracted professionals from notable organizations such as Samsung, Tata Communications, AccuKnox, and others, all seeking insights into this groundbreaking technology.
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The event commenced with Sandeep Sharma, Principal Architect at Aarna Networks, taking the stage to highlight Nephio's pioneering features, functionalities, and its application. His presentation offered attendees a comprehensive understanding of Nephio's transformative potential.

Following this, Rahul Jadhav, representing AccuKnox, contributed his expertise on leveraging Nephio for intent-driven security automation. In a digital landscape where security stands as a paramount concern, Rahul's insights underscored Nephio's critical role in enhancing security measures.
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The event continued with Sandeep Sharma and Rahul Jadhav reconvening to explore potential collaboration points and the future trajectory of Nephio. Their discussions not only provided valuable information but also ignited engaging conversations regarding Nephio's multifaceted applications across various industry segments.

Sriram Rupanagunta, CEO of Aarna Networks, brought the event to a close by leading an open discussion. This session enabled participants to raise questions and share their perspectives, fostering an environment of collaboration and shared learning. It emphasized the event's core theme of collaboration.

Nephio's potential to simplify the deployment and management of multi-vendor cloud infrastructure and network functions across large scale edge deployments is promising.

Get the presentation slides from the event here.

We hope you will join us at the next Aarna Networks meetup; if you haven't already, please join the meetup group here.