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For the telecom industry, network transformation is not a

singular event but a constant process, but it can be made easier

through refinement and collaboration with the right partners.

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China Unicom Shanghai: Devising strategies to bear the future

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ODN O&M: Manageable and easy33

IP network stewardship with Huawei30

IP network stewardship with HuaweiBy Ayush Sharma

n any business , new technologies are ideally meant to reduce costs, but this logic is on the verge of breaking down in the telecommunications field. The fancy

smartphones that carriers subsidize are now drowning their own networks in a deluge of data.

LTE rollouts will soon put carriers back above water, if they haven’t already, but these victories may be short-lived. More infrastructure will be needed, and it cannot be paid for through the mere piping of 1’s and 0’s. Services are needed, and some of the ones now offered are real dazzlers; but if their rollout is not smooth and timely, they may never turn a profit.

Facing hindrances

The launches of certain services such as high-speed broadband and IPTV have often furnished a lackluster experience involving intermittent service, ineffective maintenance, and overall mediocrity. When this occurs, these services can fall into a sort of no-man’s land that is hard to escape from as upgrade investments are hard to justify in the face of an apathetic public.

An operator may face three types of hindrances to the monetization of their latest & greatest products and services. The first is basically a poor quality of experience (QoE) stemming from technological ineptitude prior to and during launch; the many issues relating to IPTV often fall under this rubric.

The second is a tech upgrade put into place without proper consideration of how to make money off of it; a premature LTE launch would be an example here, seeing as the issues of terminal compatibility (TDD/FDD), roaming, and battery life have yet to be resolved. The third hindrance is basically timing. Figuring out the time to launch a product or service that best capitalizes on consumer buzz can be a real crapshoot, while waiting for your next doodad to be perfected can be equally risky. Think about Windows Phone if you need a reminder. The critics have largely hailed it as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it has elicited yawns from American carriers and industry pundits, who view the mobile OS game strictly as a two-horse race.

A more telco-oriented gamble might be Sprint’s seemingly belated decision to get into the iPhone game late last year, a move which prompted investors to grab their torches & pitchforks. However, iPhone 4S sales since then have proven very robust, and time will tell if the operator comes out ahead with this gambit.

To keep these issues at bay, a telco needs four things, before an offering is launched – technology, capacity, competence, and execution. That’s where Huawei comes in. To cater to operators’ business and technical needs, and address the aforementioned challenges, Huawei has developed a comprehensive professional services suite that spans a typical project lifecycle. Fig. 1 illustrates the eight phases involved – consultation, planning, design, implementation, operation, optimization, innovation, and expansion.

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How it works

Huawei’s business solutions draw on the industry experiences of the last two decades, particularly in the field of IP transformation.

Consultation & Planning phases (Advisory services)

Huawei adapts its methods to meet customer needs, not vice versa. Huawei will draw on the operator’s own experiences with what works, and combine this with a SWOT analysis of their current planning, execution, and management techniques, to jointly create a transformation plan best suited to the customer’s place in the ecosystem.

High-level transformational planning – A high-level transformation program is created that will function as a blueprint for a common understanding between the different stakeholders (operator & vendor). Fig. 2 illustrates a typical IP-based transformation program plan developed by Huawei’s professional services team.

Establishment of a joint program management office – It can be very difficult to adapt the latest technologies to suit the business needs of a particular carrier. A joint project management office (PMO) is created to assure that vision and strategy translate

into action. A governance model is also implemented for various organizations and external entities.

Current network auditing – Today’s networks are constantly in flux; in spite of stringent in-house regulations designed to ensure consistency, architecture that is homogeneous and anomaly-free is extremely rare. An independent audit that determines these inconsistencies is created, which will form the basis for network standardization, which will, in turn, form the basis for benchmarking. This audit also aides the process of network simulation and helps mitigate the effects of any catastrophic failure later on.

Business planning – A new network is merely an expensive bauble if it does not improve the bottom line. Huawei will draw up a plan that specifies key benefits that the number crunchers will love, in terms of your current user base, new revenue streams, and ROI.

Design and Implementation phases

Architectural assessment – Huawei will employ a collaborative model between vendors and other third parties that will better enable the review and evaluation of the architectural roadmap, existing network designs, network component details, applications & services (current & future), and how they relate to the technical objectives. This helps ensure consensus concerning the architectural state of and identifies gaps in the current

Figure 1 Huawei professional services

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TransitionalIP network stewardship with Huawei

A new network is merely an expensivebauble if it does not improve the bottom line. Huawei will draw up a plan that specifies key benefits that the number crunchers will love, in terms of your current user base, new revenue streams, and ROI.

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network design.Test-driving the anticipated network –

Network simulation is resource intensive and time consuming. Therefore, validation procedures should be broken up into modules (functionality, performance, security, scale, etc.) and implemented using third-party tools or the vendor’s lab; this helps preserve architectural simplicity. If this option proves unattractive, a section of the operator’s own network can be used as the wind tunnel; this requires more methodical planning & stricter controls, but it yields more valid results.

Knowledge transfer planning and “go-to-market” initiatives – Those who design networks typically do not manage or operate them, which makes gap analysis (of specif ic technology transformations) and subsequent development of a knowledge transfer plan all the more important as it must include the technology basics, product training, hands-on training (if relevant) and demonstration. In parallel, the product team must have a thorough understanding of its new toy as its features must be slick and seamless by the time marketing and pilot trials ramp up.

Operation and Optimization phases

Migration & pilot network evaluation – Huawei plans each site carefully and accurately, and

Phase 1: Business & technical planning

Phase 2: Validation & implementation

Phase 3: Operation & optimization

• Business planning• Service & network profiling• Launch planning• Ecosystem establishment

• Network baseline & blueprint creation• Gap analysis• Engage vendors & third parties• Resource identification & delegation for project team• Technical strategy & solution architecture

development• Migration plan & implementation plan development• Design & migration validation • Live migration of pilot sites• Monitoring of KPIs, KQIs, and user experience

• Operational planning• Educational section organization• Network performance measurement• Work with vendors to meet

expectations for architecture, service & network

Figure 2 IP transformation planning

uses intelligent mechanisms [migration (initially) and routing (later) plans] and automation tools to churn out large-scale configuration files that accelerate the migration process and eliminate typical manual errors. Proactive O&M is extremely important for an integrated network as it ensures QoE integrity, which is why Huawei employs various tools that visualize the network and service states.

Network optimization – The dynamism of modern networking renders optimization a constant struggle. Software updates, service launches, and network expansion are always being implemented, which warrants perpetual fine tuning. Huawei helps identify traffic optimization paths so that bottlenecks are removed, processing overhead is minimized, fai lure detection is improved, and single-point failures are eliminated from network operation.

Today’s networks are very complex and involve multiple technologies, protocols, and services. No vendor can offer a “one-size-fits-all” piece of hardware that resolves all issues throughout the network lifecycle. A partner is needed who can work with an operator at each stage to make sure that all the little pieces fit together to form the expected picture; Huawei is that partner.

Editor: Cao Zhihui caozhihui@huawei.com