Widespread use of private, cloud, hybrid and SaaS applications, including private SaaS, and rapidly growing storage requirements for terabytes of transaction logs and user information have led to complex connectivity requirements across enterprises. Real-time connectivity that ensures seamless access to any IT resource, regardless of its location, is especially crucial in the wake of bandwidth-hungry and latency-sensitive applications that are becoming a mainstay in managing and delivering critical services across industries such as smart manufacturing, banking, healthcare, energy and transportation. Service providers are already taking the lead in providing cutting-edge connectivity services that are not only fast, reliable and efficient, but also highly automated and intelligent.
China Mobile Hong Kong Company Limited ("CMHK") is the wholly-owned subsidiary of China Mobile Limited (HKEx: 941), which is listed on the Fortune Global 500. CMHK has partnered with Huawei, a leading global ICT player to deploy Huawei iMaster NCE, featuring network slicing with segment routing over IPv6 (SRv6), Network Digital Map and Net Master. This collaboration signifies a major leap forward towards the establishment of an intelligent network platform for CMHK’s enterprise customers, paving way for promising avenues for business-to-business (2B) growth.
With Huawei’s solution, CMHK is equipped with the technology it needs to establish intelligent cloud private networks and multi-cloud interconnection networks. The solution allows automated network upgrades and service provisioning, fast response to individual requirements, and ultimately, the creation of autonomous networks catering to the private connectivity needs of governments and enterprises.
This latest collaboration follows a few other notable joint projects by both parties. In 2021, Huawei implemented network slicing for CMHK’s 5G transport network. Last year, both players successfully rolled out the cloud backbone of CMHK’s Government and Enterprise Service Network (GESN) using pioneering technologies like SRv6, SDN, and base architectural models. These enabled, amongst others, automatic provisioning of high quality private lines for one-hop cloud access and efficient cross-cloud transport capacities.
The string of deployments by CMHK cannot be timelier. Recognizing the impact of AI and AI generated content (AIGC), which is set to grow into a $1.3 billion market by 2032 [1], China has released a number of industry-specific policies and incentives. This is pushing operators to invest in their cloud computing capabilities, not only to automate and enhance their own operations, but to be able to cater to the demands of their enterprise customers. This demand is driven further by emerging applications such as XR and video storage, which involve intensive computing and massive bandwidth and storage requirements. Certain industries are also contributing to operators’ cloud investments. For example, finance, which makes up 23% [2] of Hong Kong’s economy, is seeing a large shift towards cloudification. Complex demands of AI and large datasets used in AI training also rely on highly scalable computational power offered by the cloud.
Flexibility and scalability
Deploying Huawei’s solution enables CMHK to enhance slicing automation, where network resources are automatically abstracted to deliver differentiated experiences based on the service intent. This can significantly boost network monetization, enabling CMHK to support and boost the performance of their 2B, 2C and 2H services. For example, VIP customers are allocated premium-priced dedicated slices while regular users are channeled via shared pipes. Huawei’s solution enables the SLA of each slice to be continuously monitored and scaled granularly, up to megabits per second and provisioned in minutes, ensuring the network remains highly responsive to customer real-time usage requirements.
Huawei’s iMaster NCE also features the Network Digital Map, which essentially provides real-time visibility into the network. Comprising multi-layer visualization with geography, network topology, device, application and service views, it delivers network awareness across network elements and applications, allowing consolidated monitoring at all levels and faster troubleshooting and issue resolution. It also supports maintenance and optimization, including the use of digital twins to simulate network actions. Deep visibility provided by the Network Digital Map allows CMHK to upgrade services as needed, and ensures intelligent path selection for SRv6 policies and industrial slicing for traditional private lines. The entire solution effectively reduces time-to-market from days to minutes.
As part of the collaboration, CMHK also deployed Huawei's Net Master, an interactive platform that allows operators to manage the entire lifecycle of network O&M, from resource verification to service enablement, fault identification, analysis and rectification. It augments automation by using an intelligent chatbot service which comes with dialogue-based interactions and customized searches based on specific fault scenarios. This cuts down the complexities of manual network configurations. The deployment of Net Master has delivered a marked improvement in CMHK's fault diagnosis automation rate, improving efficiency by 20 percent while the mean time to repair saw a reduction from hours to minutes.
CMHK's continuous efforts in latest connectivity technologies showcases its dedication to being at the forefront of innovation. CMHK’s autonomous networks specifically, provide enterprises the agility modern businesses need in managing growing IT and digital workloads. By joining hands with Huawei, CMHK is augmenting its computing and networking capabilities with latest advancements brought by intelligence and automation. This alliance cements the commitment by both parties to continuous growth in the region.
To learn more about Huawei iMaster NCE, please click here: Huawei iMaster NCE
Sources:
[1] Bloomberg - https://www.bloomberg.com/company/press/generative-ai-to-become-a-1-3-trillion-market-by-2032-research-finds/
[2] Census and Statistics Department - https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/EIndexbySubject.html?scode=570&pcode=FA100091
