Huawei launches light IoT operating system

Kathy Gibson reports from Huawei Network Congress in Beijing – Huawei has launched a light, open operating system that will help to connect the 100-billion devices that are expected to soon connect to the Internet of Things.
William Xu, executive officer and chief strategy marketing officer at Huawei, says the new LiteOS will go a long way to making the IoT a reality.

It is predicted that, by 2025, there will be 100-billion Internet of Things devices, about 55% of them in the commercial environment.

“We don’t think the existing Internet can satisfy these needs in future,” he says. “This calls for the upgrading of the network to embrace IoT.

“So it is important to address the challenged of the 100-billion devices, and this is in line with our Agile Network 3.0.”

LiteOS will configure automatically and connect automatically.

It also offers diversified access so it can be connected to various appliances, manufacturers, smart cities and producers.

“We hope the LiteOS will be independent without complicated configuration and operate on any platform.”

Another feature of LiteOS is that it is small in size – less than 10kb – and functional.

“Because it is light, it is energy efficient,” Xu says. “For example one battery can be used continuously for about five years.”

Safety is also important, so Huawei has developed a three-dimensional safety net, including devices, network and cloud. The active and distributed defence against attacks are important features of the network, and Xu says this will guarantee the safety of the IoT.

Xu points out that Huawei launched its first Agile network in 2013, and today will launch Agile Network 3.0.

More than 100 data centres have already adopted Agile networking, he says, with more than 700 Agile branches running today.

As an example of what Agile networking can achieve, Xu points to Ajax stadium in Amsterdam where 53 000 football fans have simultaneous access to high-speed Internet.

“This means that fans anywhere in the stadium can share the excitement of the game with one another,” he says. “In addition, there can be well targeted advertising.”

Huawei has recently signed up Beijing Stadium as well.

In a business environment, China National Petroleum has used CloudEngine to build the largest enterprise data centre in the Asia-Pacific region.

To demonstrate the reliability of the network, Xu says Tencent’s WeChat handled 1-billion “red envelopes” of cash gifts online on Chinese New Years’ Eve.