The COVID-19 pandemic that has disrupted the global economy for almost two years now is expected to be in a general decline in the coming months and years due to successful global vaccine rollouts. The pandemic adversely affected lives and sectors, but was, in many ways, a boost to the telecoms industry because high-traffic and responsive communication networks became a lifeline for working from home and the increased need for on-demand entertainment.

A new digital era at our doorsteps

Having seen much change over the past few years, CSPs have learned that end-to-end, efficient, and high-quality networks with intelligent cloud transport could, and indeed should, play a crucial role in driving the new digital era. They have also become determined to solve the longstanding questions and challenges their enterprise customers pose about speeding up the marketing of new services in developing the global digitalization strategy.

Thus, CSPs are now strongly considering and planning robust wireline transport networks that connect wireless and core networks and which should be leveraged on the principles of intelligent cloud frameworks in driving and building a strong digital economy.

It is also a sad reality that in the last decade, many CSPs, being network owners themselves, have missed out on business benefits that their OTT and cloud rivals have reaped because of the lack of readiness of CSPs’ intelligent cloud network platforms.

THowever, they are now ready to unleash cloud and network convergence for accelerated enterprise cloudification requirements. Thus, in the post-COVID-19 era, enterprise digitalization will accelerate. As a result, millions of enterprises are eager to migrate to the cloud, where their production networks need to transform into unified and intelligent IPv6-based transport bearer networks.

CSPs now set to benefit from business opportunities

As an innovative Tier 1 vendor, Huawei sensed the urgent need for disruptive networks and thus launched its Intelligent Cloud-Network solution for driving digital transformation that builds on future-proof digital and cloud-native campus networks, WANs, and digital fabric networks with cutting-edge IP technology frameworks. This solution seizes new opportunities and inspires carriers 'new growth while maximizing the value of service providers 'network resources by efficiently answering the following four serious challenges of the time, namely:

· How to provide comprehensive service capabilities in edge COs (central offices) for unleashing bigger capabilities?

· How to provide quality differentiated service experiences?

· How to realize the network-on-demand for service agility?

· How to achieve optimal resource utilization?

Intelligent Cloud-Network features four new capabilities with all-service super edge CO, tenant-level hard slicing for guaranteed deterministic experiences, SRv6-powered network programmability for agile resources scheduling, and cloud-network integration for consistent cloud-network experiences. In addition, it is enabled with fast computing NetEngine intelligent routers, packaged with big data capabilities, and features AI-enabled network automation, all of which are intended to provide one-hop cloud access with one-network wide connections, one-click fast scheduling, and one-fiber multipurpose transport solution. Furthermore, Huawei claims that its experience in synergizing network intelligence and cloud solutions will increase service providers’ competitive strengths and help them enjoy the business benefits they have thus far missed.

Huawei claims that its sophisticated and robust NetEngine intelligent router series for intelligent cloud, aggregation, and backbone enabled with IPv6+ and SRv6 will help operators build intelligent cloud networks in the digital era. This Intelligent Cloud-Network solution leverages the NetEngine series and is smart enough to meet the key requirements of smooth and agile enterprise cloudification for differentiated network services. It assures a deterministic experience for digital enterprises by meeting hybrid multi-cloud requirements in the new digital era. Integration and cloud backbone construction will narrow the gap of multi-domain cloud-network synergy and provide network capability openness through network resources and path visualization.

The new normal means new challenges

In a nutshell, 2022 will be a year of change—a new normal in which deterministic networking experiences for network-to-cloud integration is a key requirement. Huawei’s Intelligent Cloud-Network integration has already seen traction among CSPs in the first few days of its launch globally. It has injected new momentum into the industrial digital transformation of industries.

Huawei is now betting on its responsibility to deliver network digitalization, network intelligence, and network as a service in its vision. This digital vision will only work thanks to seamless network cloud integration with best-in-breed next-generation and innovative IPv6+ technology foundation with zero IP packet loss and guaranteed user experiences with intelligent AI-enabled network operations.

Author

Sameer Ashfaq Malik, Senior Principal Analyst, Service Provider Network Routing and Switching