Collaborative ‘open’ working practices are the way forward for driving innovation, building better services and satisfying emerging user expectations.
Why is open collaboration important?
New and emerging digital technologies are reshaping user expectations, and changing the way businesses are providing solutions to their customers.
By 2020 networks and devices will have evolved beyond recognition, with the advent of the super-phone, 5G connectivity, and high performance video. This presents a golden opportunity for businesses to create new products and services within this period of digital transformation over the next 4 years.
However, businesses must be mindful to place user-experience at the centre of innovation. They will need to be prepared to adopt collaborative ‘open’ working practices to satisfy increasing demands for real-time, on-demand, all-online, DIY, and social experiences (ROADS).
Championing open collaboration
The industry must embrace change. It is no longer the case that companies can work in siloes to provide a better user experience.
Our ‘tree of collaboration’ business model showcased at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), represents how different industries can contribute within an open ecosystem to maximise the end-user experience. From the ‘roots’ of open source providers, to the ‘branches’ and ‘leaves’ of telecom operators, professional service companies, and vertical industries, all have a part to play.
We are currently working with over 40 operators and 33 industry players around the world, and have created more than 73 case examples. Let’s look at some of these examples which showcase the benefits of applying an ‘open collaboration’ methodology.
Evolving NFV through competitor collaboration
The industry has slowly begun to understand the importance of Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) architectures in recent years, but carriers still face many challenges as they work towards network evolution, such as how to ensure consistency and reliability of different vendors’ products.
NFV technology enables carriers to deploy solutions faster and easier as it establishes an open common framework within the industry. NFV makes network and service provisioning more flexible as you can simulate different hardware dependent on the VNF you are using, allowing carriers to be more agile and provide better tailored services for the end-user.
An ‘open collaboration’ business model enables the evolution of NFV technologies, working with companies and competitors. We’ve recently collaborated with our competitor Red Hat, a big player within the OpenStack and open-source domain, to build, deploy, and support, multiple vendor integration within mobile broadband architectures.
As part of this partnership, we used our ‘Open Labs’ in China to conduct rigorous testing resulting in the evolution of ‘open’ NFV technology. Not only is the end-user given a solution that is flexible, cost saving, scalable, and secure, but they are able to pick and choose the players who will make up the network to align with their needs.
Delivering better security within the cloud
Businesses are constantly under the threat of cyber-attacks, for example DDoS, APT, and malware, resulting in a need for effective counter measures. With the increasing number of attacks and threats caused by hackers, companies need to be vigilant across all their IT.
As a way of dealing with these security threats companies must begin working in partnership to share and grow expertise. Through an ‘open’ SDN cloud solution we have integrated more than 10 partners including Fortinet and Checkpoint, providing smart, agile and flexible cloud security services, and enabling operators to extend their business to the security services market.
Tuukka Helander, consultant systems engineer, Fortinet commented on the partnership at MWC: “As a value added service partner our collaboration with Huawei, which began in February 2015, makes providing our solutions to the customer much faster, and easier to implement. Our customers save costs and receive a better end-user experience as the SDN solution enables us to be flexible, scaling down or scaling out the services we provide.”
The partnership has also resulted in further collaborative work within programme design and testing, including cooperation with operators, partners, and the open source community, to develop network security services programmes in the future.
Making cities safer
With an increasing population and the growing frequency of crime, the protection of citizens is paramount for city administrators. It’s essential that governments, emergency services, consulting firms, system integrators, and software vendors all collaborate together to improve safety.
We are working in partnership with these organisations, implementing new technologies to build the world’s first visual convergent command centre. By drawing upon the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile broadband, video and big data, traditional urban safety management has evolved to improve crisis prevention and emergency handling capabilities, while reducing crime rates.
A centre was recently deployed in Kenya to improve public safety. As a result, the crime rate dropped dramatically by 46 percent, demonstrating the power of collaboration. The command centres now serve more than 400 million people across 30 countries, enabling cities to build intelligent security systems.
Improving consumer connectivity
Smartphones and mobile broadband networks have changed the way people live and work, leading to a greater demand for data and continuous connectivity. People now expect to be connected 24/7, anywhere, and at any-time.
However, there are still many areas in the world where connectivity is very poor or unconnected. As a way of coping with these expectations, we have worked with telecom providers and local businesses to provide network coverage in these areas.
We recently partnered with Vivo and a local bus company to deploy small cells in an area of 1.3 billion square metres in Rio to resolve connectivity issues and outages. In addition we have partnered with Vodafone and JCDecaux, an outdoor advertising company, to install small cells on street furniture and billboards in the Netherlands to give customers faster connectivity.
Bridging the digital divide
We are living a world, which is increasingly fragile. The intensity of natural disasters and world conflicts are increasing in frequency, which are impacting on the lives of people in communities and countries.
It is important for companies to work together to develop initiatives to support humanitarian relief and provide education to those who have limited opportunities, living in remote areas of the world.
Our partnership with Vodafone Foundation is a great example of such a partnership. The Instant Network Programme has provided emergency response communications and technical support to aid agencies and victims in areas affected by natural or humanitarian disaster.
Through the provision of Huawei communications equipment and devices, including over 700 tablets, we have also supported Vodafone Foundation’s Instant Network Schools Programme, facilitating mobile online education to one of the largest refugee camps in the world based in Dadaab, Kenya. The programme currently operates 18 Instant Network Schools, benefiting over 25,000 children and 500 teachers around the world.
Oisin Watson, Vodafone Foundation commented on the success of the partnership at this year’s MWC: “Huawei is Vodafone Foundation’s trusted technology partner in its commitment to improve people’s lives and support the UN Global Goals for sustainable development. We are encouraging network operators, vendors, and software companies to continue to collaborate to help people around the world to achieve a Better Connected World.”
Open collaboration to support a super-connected world
The digital landscape will continue to evolve with advent of NB-IoT, 4.5G, 5G and GigaRadio, changing the way society functions and people live, placing even more demands on providing a seamless user experience.
NB-IoT will open the floodgates to collaborations and partnerships within vertical industries. The market is estimated to be worth 6.5 trillion by 2020, and healthcare, waste management and energy will be some of the top industries to harness the Internet of Things.
As the Telco landscape continues to evolve, collaboration is essential in maximising user-experience. Businesses must work together across multiple industries and verticals as we look to provision for a Better Connected World.
