Intelligence: Flexible and intelligent resource management, including fully automated planning, provisioning, resource allocation, and O&M to support thousands or even millions of service instances.

Efficiency: Multi-tenant resource pooling rather than building a separate physical network for each and every individual industry, breaking down network ‘silos’ to maximize resource sharing.

Openness: Enable collaboration with partners across multiple industries to support a variety of customers in the new intelligent world.

To succeed, operators need a future-oriented network that puts the user experience at the heart of the network by supporting high bandwidth and low latency, as well as being flexible, scalable, and simple to manage to support their businesses in the future. By rolling out the “All-Cloud Network” strategy across all Huawei products and solutions, Huawei aims to create new business opportunities and jointly create an open and innovative industry ecosystem. During the “All-Cloud Network” enabling process, Huawei is committed to being an advocator, an accelerator and eventually a leader of the “All-Cloud Network”. Huawei has three main goals:

Enable “expansion of business scope”: Provide stronger network performance and an operational platform that shortens TTM from months to days, helping operators grow traditional businesses and embrace new market opportunities in vertical industries, including Smart Home, IoT, Smart City and Industrial 4.0.

Achieve an “agile and efficient” network: Deliver network resource synergy and maximize network resources utilization rate, and decrease OPEX with automated operation.

Enable a “ROADs user experience”: User experience should be a comprehensive set of factors, not only at the time of “using the service”, but also at the time of service order placement and order fulfillment. ROADs user experience is the goal for operators to achieve digital transformation and operation.

Driving Business Success through an Innovative All-Cloud Network

To enable an “all-cloud upgrade” across operator metro networks, radio access networks, fixed access networks, IP networks and optical networks, Huawei has developed a series of solutions to enhance network agility and efficiency, including CloudRAN, CloudFAN, CloudMetro, CloudBackbone and CloudOptiX. These solutions are already being deployed and gaining industry recognition, for example in October 2016, Huawei released the CloudFAN solution to roll out commercial deployment of network slicing technology; In January 2017, Huawei worked with China Unicom Guangdong to employ Huawei’s CloudMetro solution for its SD-UTN smart leased line services. This enables flexible management, as well as the provision of a one-stop service of on-demand networking and cloud-based ICT function for the company; In 2016, Huawei and Telefonica Peru won the “Best Innovation in Virtualization Award” for their IP and optical SDN network during the Broadband World Forum 2016.

Huawei has also released its CloudEPN (Enterprise Private Network) solution to meet enterprises’ B2B needs and enabling agile interconnection among SMEs and one-stop ICT services. The CloudEPN solution supports both SD-WAN and CloudVPN models, helping achieve high-quality service experiences across entire processes and provide enterprises with new enterprise leased lines. In September 2016, Telefonica announced that Huawei’s end-to-end CloudVPN solution will be deployed for Telefonica’s global CloudVPN procurement framework and a laboratory will be set up in Argentina for a pilot commercial deployment of the CloudVPN technology.

To meet the needs of the enterprise campus market, operators must transform from a box-supplier to a cloud-service provider. To help operators to tap into this emerging trillion dollar market, Huawei has rolled out the innovative CloudCampus solution which enables the delivery of cloud-based services for enterprise campus network planning, building and management services.

Furthermore, to help address the trend of vertical industry digitalization, Huawei has released the cloud-based Edge Computing IoT (EC-IoT) solution. The SDN-based solution can achieve mass and unified IoT gateway management, providing the foundation for operators to tap into the IoT market. The solution supports EC-IoT intelligence and local survival functions in which operators can manage IoT data in a real-time and efficient manner. In September 2016, Huawei collaborated with Schindler on cooperation for IoT connectivity. Huawei’s open, flexible and scalable EC-IoT Internet of Elevators and Escalators (IoEE) solution has facilitated millions of global elevators to achieve intelligent service management.

Huawei has also upgraded its CloudFabric Solution to help operators build a data-center-centric network structure. With the help of two core components - CloudEngine data-center (DC) switch and Agile Controller, the CloudFabric Solution enables an open, agile and efficient cloud DC. In February 2017, Huawei’s CloudFabric Solution helped China Unicom Henan deploy a commercial distributed cloud DC which delivers localized cloud services with low latency, secure data isolation, and a unified management platform to meet increasing demand for cloud services from local government, medical and educational institutions and SMEs.

Despite often being seen only as a vision for the future, All-Cloud Netwoks are already in use by Huawei customers and are providing tangible benefits. In fact, as of 2016, Huawei signed more than 70 commercial contracts with operators and jointly rolled out more than 200 All-Cloud Network commercial deployments with enterprise customers.

The future cloud network presents huge market potential. Full-gear and close collaboration from all industry parties is needed to build an industry ecosystem with positive impact and eventually, enable a successful rollout of the cloud network. Huawei calls for the establishment of the cloud-network ecosystem and committed to nurturing the ecosystem.

— David Wang, President, Network Solutions, Huawei