Ericsson is intensifying its already close relationship with influential operator SK Telecom of Korea, hugely important ally in its quest to keep its carrier customers even as they transition to cloud platforms. SK Telecom will be an anchor partner in the further development of Ericsson’s Hyperscale Datacenter System (HDS) 8000, unveiled at Mobile World Congress in March, and will help drive it into key growth areas from cloud services to the internet of things (IoT). The two companies will work to make the HDS 8000 ready for commercial prime-time, testing it with live traffic and cooperating with partners – which will give SK valuable early insights, and the chance to influence the platform’s final specs. They will “establish software-defined data…