Swedish telco equipment vendor Ericsson is to install open source cloud operating system OpenStack across its external and internal data centers, and across its telco and cloud infrastructure.

The management software, supplied by OpenStack vendor Mirantis, was purchased in a five-year deal worth estimated at US$30m.

The installation is vital because OpenStack has become a crucial component of the data center, Jason Hoffman, Ericsson’s head of cloud systems and platforms, said.

Ericsson will standardize on the Mirantis version of OpenStack and the two companies will collaborate to make the software more durable, resilient and fine tune its performance.

Ericsson began trials with OpenStack, as a replacement for VMware as a platform to manage its data center computing infrastructure, over 18 months ago.

The telecoms equipment vendor was urged to commit to open source cloud operations by its biggest telecom carrier customers.

In many data centers of global telcos CIOs are examining how to make their networks more efficient and friendly to innovation, according to Ericsson.

Hoffman said Mirantis OpenStack mostly replaces software from VMware that it used to manage its computing infrastructure.

After the trails, the vendor moved onto initial pilot projects last year, which proved successful in its telecom network.

Having satisfied Hoffman of its veracity, OpenStack was then deployed onto Ericsson’s own data centers.

“The biggest value for the end customers are the new services they will be able to get more rapidly,” Adrian Ionel, Mirantis’ CEO, said.

Next Ericsson is looking to reconfigure its applications to work with the open source cloud management software.

It is now building a cloud computing service based on the VMware replacement.

The resulting OpenStack cloud infrastructure will provide the foundations for selling service to its customers – including the telecom carriers that forced the change in the first place.

The Ericsson cloud service is currently being evaluated on trial with some big telecom customers, Hoffman said.

“You are talking about building a new platform that combines radios and data centers,” Hoffman said.

“This really will be a five-year journey.”

Ericsson has also invested in Mirantis, according to Hoffman.

Mirantis has raised $20m to date and the company’s other investors include Intel Capital, Red Hat, SAP Ventures and Dell Ventures.