February 15, 2025

GWS5000

Make Every Business

Microsoft Pounces on UK’s Metaswitch Networks, as it Continues its 5G Software Push

FavoriteLoadingIncrease to favorites

Deal arrives incredibly hot on the heels of MSFT’s Affirmed Networks buyout

Microsoft has agreed to acquire the UK’s Metaswitch Networks, a virtualised network application application specialist for an undisclosed sum, considerably less than ten months following pinching Affirmed Networks from below AWS’s nose, as the corporation continues its push into the 5G/telco application sector.

Metaswitch, established in 1981, is a network features virtualisation (NFV) pioneer which provides networking application stacks to OEMs and method sellers globally. It claims it has delivered stacks to “more than 1,000 communications services suppliers and network equipment suppliers.”

Its customers contain Cisco, Datacom, Dell and Nokia.

The corporation features a 5G core that it promises allows operators transcend the risk of running “highly-inefficient dual-core networks” as they pivot from 4G to 5G and also provides a networking application toolkit to OEMs.

The buyout arrives as telcos continue to undertake virtualised platforms — a lot of are held down by legacy tech stacks — as they change from network features running on specialist dedicated hardware, to a person in which virtualisation has rendered actual physical features as application – which can be operate as VMs over common-purpose servers, like in the cloud.

Microsoft’s company VP for Azure networking Yousef Khalidi explained the deal would assist it “support hybrid and multi-cloud models to produce a far more numerous telecom ecosystem and spur more rapidly innovation, an expanded set of one of a kind choices and bigger prospects for differentiation”.

He extra: “We will continue to spouse with present suppliers, emerging innovators and network equipment associates to share roadmaps and discover expanded prospects to get the job done together, like in the spots of radio accessibility networks (RAN), future-technology core, virtualized expert services, orchestration and operations aid method/business aid method (OSS/BSS) modernization.”

Metaswitch CEO Martin Lund explained the buyout would depart it “ideally put to help people operators keen to changeover to cloud native deployments, to 5G networks and to the period of compelling apps that are served from the core and edge of new network architectures”.