Qualcomm Technologies announced today that it will be acquiring Cellwize Wireless Technologies for an undisclosed amount. Cellwize is an Israel-based startup specializing in mobile network automation and orchestration software.
Qualcomm is one of a several prominent investors in Cellwize, including Intel Capital, Samsung and Verizon Ventures. Cellwize was founded in 2012 and employs over 300 people in Israel and globally. The company touts 40 MNO customers, 3 million cell sites managed by their software supporting 800 million subscribers globally.
In commenting about the acquisition, Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager, cellular modems and infrastructure, Qualcomm Technologies, asserted: “The addition of Cellwize’s best-in-class RAN automation technologies strengthens Qualcomm’s ability to drive the development of the modern 5G network – accelerating Open RAN global adoption, cloud-based cellular infrastructure innovation and 5G private network deployments.”
At face value, the acquisition of a network management software startup may seem off script for a “smartphone” or “modem” company. Yet, it is no secret that CEO Cristiano Amon has expressed bold ambition to evolve Qualcomm beyond its legacy in the handset and IP licensing. We have seen this ambition play out in the company’s forays into automotive, PC computing on Arm, XR, and various industrial IoT domains.
From the perspective of Qualcomm’s cellular infrastructure business, Cellwize positions Qualcomm in an important role in addressing one of the biggest challenges that MNOs face as they look to modernize their networks in the 5G Open RAN era. This challenge happens to be the simple truth that traditional RANs and previous generation networks are not going anywhere anytime soon for brownfield operators. To varying degrees, they will persist for the foreseeable and practical future.
At Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona, Cellwize announced its CHIME service management orchestration (SMO) solution which provides MNOs with the tools to manage and operate what the company calls Hybrid ORAN infrastructures as they “introduce ORAN capabilities into their networks.”
CHIME is being positioned by Cellwize as a multi-technology, multi-vendor, multi-generation network management and orchestration platform capitalizing on the company’s experience helping their current customers with network infrastructure modernization and intelligent automation. CHIME’s support of Open RAN’s Non-Real Time RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) enables operators to manage and automate a heterogenous portfolio of RAN technologies and deployments along the lines of the “Multi-Technology” proposition that Ericsson proclaimed for its Intelligent Automation Platform announced back in November 16 of 2021.
Emerging multi-technology SMO platforms, or what Cellwize calls Hybrid ORAN SMO, will likely play an important role in enabling the gradual adoption of Open RAN architectures and standards within operator organizations and networks by providing a middleware and the intelligent management frameworks that, as the company puts it, “bridge the gap between traditional RANs and Open RAN and 5G.”
This could be very good for Open RAN as operators will have a platform for easing the onboarding of Open RAN features and technologies that come into maturity and readiness for scale out deployment. In other words, engineering teams can adopt Open RAN principles and technologies today while realizing the benefits of cross-technology integration and service orchestration across their infrastructure portfolios. Multi-tech SMO platforms could also help expand the scope of and accelerate the intelligent automation of their networks.
CHIME’s RIC-based software platform also gets Qualcomm into the rAPP game which has become an exciting proposition of Open RAN service innovation for operators. Cellwize’s Hybrid ORAN approach should place Qualcomm right in the middle of this service innovation conversation with its infrastructure customers by enabling new service architectures and compositions across heterogenous portfolios of RANs, vendor equipment and software, and generations of RAN technology.
The question remains: How does this acquisition fit into Qualcomm's strategy? What are the synergies that the company can realize going forward?
The acquisition of Cellwize is another expression of how Qualcomm is committed to expand its role and brand beyond the smartphone, the air interface, and the radio. Cellwize takes Qualcomm deeper into the network. It also expands the footprint of its business across what the company calls the Connected Intelligent Edge defined as the distributed computing edge that spans across endpoint devices to the edge infrastructure that connect users to the cloud.
This is a big deal as it creates new opportunities to broaden and deepen the presence of Qualcomm’s connected processors and AI accelerators beyond the smartphone and the RU and DU. It also sets them up for some interesting edge cloud management plays in the future, especially in advancing public and private 5G industrial networks and edge computing.
Cellwize supports the emerging narrative of many semiconductor companies playing in the 5G space that software is important. With the likes of Nvidia pushing the notion that they are as much a software company as they are a GPU company, Cellwize adds a catalytic piece to the Qualcomm portfolio that likely has as much to do with the company’s AI strategy as it does with its Open 5G/6G RAN ambitions.
Finally, Cellwize will provide Qualcomm with integrations with “traditional RANs,” vRANS and O-RAN compliant RANs that are foundational for a multi-technology SMO.
Why does this seemingly odd addition to Qualcomm's 5G infrastructure business portfolio make sense?
Open RAN has a brownfield problem. With a few notable exceptions, Open RAN initiatives continue to struggle to progress out of test labs and pilots. The challenges of integrated service orchestration and management across an increasingly heterogenous RAN technology portfolio and network will remain top of mind among brownfield operators over open interoperability until Open RAN becomes a dominant factor.
Cellwize with its CHIME Hybrid ORAN SMO solution is poised to help operators address their daunting integration problems that will only get more challenging as operators look to modernize and automate their networks in a 5G Open RAN era. For Qualcomm, Cellwize is at the least an interesting bet that could unleash the benefits of Open RAN sooner than later for the company’s infrastructure customers and ecosystem partners.
Leonard Lee is the founder and managing director of neXt Curve, a research advisory firm focused on Information and Communication industry and technology research. He has worked as an executive consultant and industry analyst at Gartner, IBM, PwC and EY and has advised leading companies globally on competitive strategy, product and service innovation and business transformation. Follow Leonard on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/leonard-lee-nextcurve
“Industry Voices” are opinion columns written by outside contributors—often industry experts or analysts—who are invited to the conversation by Fierce staff. They do not represent the opinions of Fierce.