At Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2023, Steven Zhao, Vice President of Huawei Data Communication Product Line, launched Huawei’s Digital Managed Network solution, a portfolio of 52 products designed to enable carriers to transform from being internet service providers to being managed service providers.
Zhao said that the opportunity for that transformation is being driven by three trends within the enterprise.
First , enterprises are moving their production systems to the cloud. Second, enterprises are attracted by the opportunity to reduce OPEX by buying network services. Third, they are paying more attention to network security.
But these trends also present challenges for business customers, and it is these challenges that operators can help them address, leveraging Huawei’s Digital Managed Network solution.
Moving mission critical enterprise applications to the cloud means that enterprises must have guaranteed performance and reliability. Wireless campus networks require a different set of network assurance skills. On security, the cost of protecting networks, data and services is increasing for enterprises, and they need a cost effective solution.
The Digital Managed Network solution gives operators a platform to tackle these challenges, and provide managed services to enterprises. It is built on five parts, with a range of products within each part: Managed LAN, Managed WAN, Managed Security, Managed DCN, and private line service upgrades such as slicing and visibility.
Zhao said that carriers can upsell Managed LAN with cloud management technology, increasing monthly spend from a private line to a managed LAN package. Huawei’s SD-WAN solution provides a “one hop” solution to multi-cloud connectivity, and can also provide a unique Remote Unit solution to allow for agile expansion to new facilities. Being cloud based, it is elastic in capacity and can easily support a multi-tenant offering.
For Managed security, Zhao said that carriers can provide affordable security service packages for small and medium enterprises based on Huawei’s cloud-based architecture and product.
“Enterprise customers can subscribe border protection, terminal protection, and anti-ransomware services online,” Zhao said, with the Digital Managed Network providing all-in-one service providing firewall, intrusion protection, anti-virus, log audit, vulnerability scanning, etc.
Simplified architecture and all-IP protocols converge datacentre computing and storage networks into one network, helping carriers unify resource scheduling across multiple data centres, and reducing provisioning of services from days to minutes.
To support these solutions, the Digital Managed Network platform can also provide enhanced service assurance and automation capabilities for private line services.
“We provide the industry’s first tenant level network slicing. The slice bandwidth reaches Megabit level, and maximises network monetisation,” Zhao said.
Additionally, Huawei’s Zhao said that a network digital map – it claimed it was an industry-first – enables real time visibility from the physical link layer to the service layer.
Concluding, Zhao said, “These products and solutions can help carriers improve digital managed network service capabilities, quickly transform from ISP to MSP , and achieve new growth.”
