Microsoft’s presence at Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week will be relatively subdued. Instead of discussing hardware, the company will focus on Azure telecommunications services.
Specifically, the new Azure Operator Distributed Services product that will function with AT&T Network Cloud Technology. Microsoft and AT&T have a long-running and extensive 5G partnership.
Specifically, Microsoft Azure became integrated with AT&T’s Network Cloud 5G tools. The two tech giants have combined to become developers of the new Network Edge Compute (NEC). With the platform, Microsoft Azure and Edge computing solutions are available to 5G customers by leveraging AT&T 5G networks.
With Azure Operator Distributed Services, Microsoft will add another tool for 5G networks operated by AT&T. According to the company, the product bundles Azure Arc, Azure security, analytics, AI, machine learning, monitoring, and other Azure capabilities into a single package.
Details
It functions across AT&T’s core network that covers over 60 cloud-native network functions (CNFs) and virtual network functions (VNFs) over 15 vendors. In a blog post to accompany the announcement, Microsoft says the following:
“We designed the Azure Operator Distributed Services for use by all operators while maintaining security and without losing differentiation. In terms of security and privacy, we want to make clear that operators using Azure Operator Distributed Services continue to hold access to their customer data, Microsoft cannot access or see it. With this product, we want to enable operators to deliver new services faster and more flexibly across Azure public cloud and on-premises with common tooling and services, reducing time-to-market with a cloud-native approach.”
Microsoft and AT&T will begin testing Azure Operator Distributed Services later this year. One of the components of the platform – Azure Operator 5G Core – is available starting today.
Tip of the day: Whether it’s for a presentation, song, or YouTube video, at some point in your life you’ll need to record audio from your computer. Windows 11 has multiple options to record sound due to its litany of apps. In our tutorial, we show you how to record audio using the built-in Windows 10 Voice Recorder and the freeware audio editor Audacity.
