Huawei recently showcased its software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) technologies at the SDN & OpenFlow World Congress in Germany.
At the event, Huawei discussed how industry partners can best utilize these technologies to further the development of the telecom industry, with specific focus on how its SoftCOM strategy will continue to help address this industry trend.
“Huawei’s SoftCOM will unleash the full potential of SDN and NFV, building an open and flexible network infrastructure for the ICT industry. We hope to work with all industry participants to create a future-oriented open network ecosystem in the cloud ICT era,” says Ken Wang (Shengqing), president of global marketing and solutions at Huawei.
As ICT technologies become increasingly cloud-based, telecom carriers are faced with the pressure of increased development costs and sluggish revenue growth. In this new era of ICT, carriers must now focus on evolving their businesses to address these challenges and regain competency.
Based on the concepts of cloud computing, SDN, and NFV, Huawei developed the future-oriented telecom network architecture strategy, SoftCOM, which aims to help reconstruct the telecom industry from the perspectives of network architecture, network functions, as well as service and Observation and Measurements (O&M) models.
The SoftCOM strategy enables telecom carriers to realize comprehensive network evolution and business transformation, thus creating and seizing new value opportunities through ICT integration. This approach will further help with establishing and advancing an open, interconnected, and innovative ecosystem, to increase and better leverage the aggraded industry value.
Focusing on technological development driven by business requirements, Huawei has experimented with numerous SDN and NFV innovations across all network fields and launched corresponding solutions to help carriers implement full-scale network and business transformation for the future.
To date, Huawei has worked with more than 20 leading carriers around the world including Telefonica, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, on over 60 joint SDN- and NFV-related innovation projects. In 2014, Huawei and global carriers executed several commercial SDN and NFV deployments, including the world’s first commercial SDN deployment in cooperation with China Telecom, the SDN-based Wo cloud project in cooperation with China Unicom, the SDN-based hybrid cloud project in cooperation with China Telecom, and an NFV-based vIMS joint project in Europe.
The SDN & OpenFlow World Congress saw Huawei reveal its new Flexible Ethernet solution and an innovative network architecture MobileFlow, as well as several prototype systems of its new technologies.
