In October 2017, Dell EMC set up an IoT division with a three-year, $1bn program to develop an architecture and services portfolio centered on the edge and 5G, but with little space left for MNOs in its value chain. Halfway through that three-year period, the company has warmed towards some telcos at least, signing a partnership with Orange to work on use cases and a common hardware platform for the edge-based 5G IoT. The partnership involves most of Orange’s units – its mobile or fixed operations in Europe and Africa, and Orange Business Services in 196 territories around the world. Initially, the two companies will cooperate on defining promising use cases and business models; and validating hardware accelerators to support…