Huawei Pins Growth On Cloud
At Huawei Connect 2016 in Shanghai, the company showcased its Agile Network 2016 that focuses solutions on the mobilization of users and services during the digital transformation of enterprises
At the recently concluded, three-day Huawei Connect 2016 (Aug 31-Sep 2) in Shanghai, China, attended by global audience of over 20,000 industry leaders and 450+ journalists Huawei leaders, partners and customers took stock, and outlined vision and agenda, on how to promote digital transformation in industries and build a better connected world.
The company leadership emphasized that it will drive the ecosystem of devices, pipe (network) and the cloud to lead this “intelligence revolution” from the front and is actively involved in shaping the cloud, which is said to be the ever evolving, never ageing brain of the world.
“As industries integrate and consumer demands evolve, enterprises have to become more open and flexible, and future-proof their business. In the current cloud 2.0 era, all industries right from healthcare to education will become more interconnected and complex and (in this environment) marketplace advantages will come from within an organization, as has traditionally been the case, and also externally from the ecosystem in which they operate – forming a combination of both competitive and ecological advantages,” said Guo Ping, Rotating CEO of Huawei. He added that the ICT ecosystem will become more open, dynamic, and symbiotic. Every enterprise, big or small, can take part in this interdependent, symbiotic, and regenerative community of common interests, as long as it has its own unique value and makes its own unique contribution. This will lead to an era of broad alliances where influential, luminary companies and talent will emerge in great numbers. Guo branded these emerging companies as “heroes”.
Huawei Drives Cloud 2.0, Enables Heroes
Huawei uses SDN (Software Defined Networking) technology to shape the network architecture of the cloud era and to establish a firm foundation for the digital transformation of enterprises. The company’s new Agile Network 2016 focuses solutions on the mobilization of users and services during the digital transformation of enterprises, on IoT application of production systems, and on new challenges brought by cloud-based applications.
This new solution intends to create a network that is ondemand, has self-services, is easily managed, and is both secure and trusted. It uses cloud technology to simplify network management, while the software-defined networking (SDN) architecture better enables cloud intelligence. The Agile Network adheres to the concepts of ‘open, simple, and secure’, and is able to assist enterprises in achieving service innovation, service agility, and financial efficiency during digitization.
“For the Cloud, By the Cloud, perfectly explains the proposition” said Shaowei Liu, President of Huawei Enterprise Network Product Line in his keynote explaining the offering. An IP technology expert Liu who has 19 patents to his credit said, “New business models brought about by cloud services are
subverting traditional industries, and a intelligent cloud that provides services relies on a software-defined, open, simple, and secure network. This network is able to connect every part of an enterprise, every IoT system, and every mobile device. Cloud technology is also changing the efficiency of service deployment, management, and Operation and Maintenance (O&M) for traditional networks. Networks of the future should combine virtualization, automation, edge intelligence, cloudbased management, and security everywhere.”
The new Agile Network 2016 innovative solutions released include:
Cloud Campus: It uses cloud technology to achieve campus network planning, deployment, and O&M for the full lifecycle network cloud management. It enables provisioning of services within minutes and serves not only small to medium-sized campuses, but also allows the company to launch cloud management solution aimed at medium to large-sized campuses. Cloud management innovatively achieves the flexible switching between the local management and cloud-based management of network devices, allowing networks to smoothly evolve. Cloud Campus allows customers build enterprise-level cloud management platforms themselves.
Cloud VPN: Targeting the issue of increasingly high private line costs of enterprises, Huawei offers cost efficient Internet links with private line links using SD WAN technology, optimizing the application-based paths of multiple links, and allowing enterprises to make huge savings on the leasing of WAN links while maintaining the quality of services. With carriers’ urgent request for B2B service transformation in mind, this solution allows carriers to provide enterprises with self-service, menu-like, and high quality enterprise interconnection services, permitting customers to adjust bandwidth as needed, flexibly scale services, deploy new devices, and provision new services within minutes. It replaces expensive and complex network security products with simple and easy-to-use cloud-based security services for enterprises, also facilitating SMB enterprises in obtaining cost-effective protection.
Additionally, the Agile Network 2016 updates include a Cloud Fabric 5.0 solution with refined O&M, new practice for IoT in the elevator industry, and a ubiquitous virtualized security solution: Cloud Security.
Migration to Cloud is a Business Requirement
In the last decade, cloud computing came to be viewed as a revolutionary technology driving the evolution of the IT industry. However, due to data sovereignty restrictions, difficulties in enterprise application migration and other reasons, less than 20%
of enterprise applications are currently running on the cloud.
The coming decade will, however, see enterprises rapidly migrating services to the cloud. This includes migration from non-critical services and standard applications to production systems and critical services. According to a custom research paper released by the consulting company, Forrester, “By 2025, more than 85% of enterprise apps will be run from the cloud.”
In terms of the cloud ecosystem, Huawei is building more open platforms to allow for continuous contributions to open-source communities, like OpenStack, Hadoop, Spark, and Docker.
Zheng Yelai, President of IT Product Line at Huawei said, “Huawei is working with its partners and developers on cloud innovation to bridge today to tomorrow.”
According to Forrester research paper, most companies have been opting for a bolt-on digital strategy with just 25% of their respondents going after digital transformation. The study covered 212 business leaders from US, UK, Germany, Australia, India, Mexico and South Africa. “However, for an enterprise, shifting to the cloud is a process of value creation,” said Yelai.
In the coming decade, cloud services will quickly become default for technology teams around the world, with increasing use of public cloud services in support of core business capabilities.
Internet-based services differ considerably from traditional enterprise services. The demand for differentiated services creates the need for differentiated clouds. For Internet services, customers’ apps have to adapt to a cloud, while for traditional services, a cloud must support customers’ apps. “To enable Chinese enterprises to go global and foreign enterprises to enter the Chinese market, we need a global cloud and a platform, which calls for a unified API, architecture and ecosystem. Huawei, along with global carriers and other major partners, will build a cloud-based network for enterprises around the world to make optimal use of the cloud. Cloud-based technologies will enable enterprises to make more informed decisions and embrace automatic management, agile innovation, and an open ecosystem,” added Yelai. He comes with rich experience in OSS, wireless network optimization and network planning.
The company is already working on a telecom cloud with Germany’s Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica in the European market.
Business driven ICT infrastructure is the motto Huawei leaders follow emphasized, Ma Yue, the Vice President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group (EBG). “We are building the ecosystem with 30 strategic partners, 10 open labs and 10,000 overall partners 400 of whom are in the solutions space,” said Yue adding that flexible, technology architectures will dominate the post digital era. The many partner case studies presented, including Schindler, SAP, GE, Honeywell, HSBC and Indian IT major Infosys, at the conference showcased the same.