The O-RAN Alliance is a worldwide community of telcos, vendors, government, research, and academic organizations creating an open specification for the radio area network (RAN). The specification defines
a component called Service Management and Orchestration or SMO that addresses the orchestration, management, and automation aspects of O-RAN. The SMO is critical for supporting and managing a multi-vendor RAN environment. With the right SMO, you can choose the best-of-breed network function
(RU, CU, DU, and NearRT RIC) and simultaneously reduce OPEX.
The O-RAN Software Community (O-RAN SC) is focused on aligning with the O-RAN Alliance's open architecture and specifications to achieve a solution that can be utilized for industry deployment including the O-RAN SMO. The Aarna Networks team is an active participant and contributor to the O-RAN SC SMO project and has leveraged project artifacts to build the industry’s first open source O-RAN SMO.
The O-RAN SMO is becoming a reality through the O-RAN Alliance & O-RAN Alliance SC
The AMCOP O-RAN SMO is aligned with the Linux Foundation's O-RAN-SC project, giving confidence for O1 and A1 compliance. It is fully cloud native and can be deployed onto Kubernetes clusters. It can be centralized or distributed at the RAN site and can work with CNF, VNFs, or EMSs as well. It is lightweight and easy to deploy, manage, and use.