Fierce competition from OTT players means operators risk becoming mere channels. To reduce costs, increase service agility, develop new digital services, and acquire new revenue streams, operators must embrace new ICT technologies.
That’s why more are seeking strategic partnerships with ICT service providers with primary integration experience, global best practices, and ICT transformation capabilities.
Beyond operations
In recent years, operators have found it harder to boost revenue as traditional telecom services continue to decline. It has become imperative for them to enhance competitiveness by controlling OPEX and improving efficiency.
At the same time, managed services that only focus on cutting OPEX are no longer sufficient to help operators overcome the challenges they face. In this sense, they need more from managed service providers.
Transformation has to go beyond operations. Operators need to overhaul their enterprise application (E/A) architecture with virtualization, software-defined technologies, and cloud computing, so they can optimize CAPEX, increase service agility or TTM, and better meet customer demand for a ROADS experience.
This kind of transformation will involve technologies from multiple vendors, which calls for market insight, an understanding of customers, and business innovation. It also requires cost control and risk management. The combination of these factors present new challenges for operators. As a result, they need strategic partners with primary integration capabilities and compatible business objectives.
A global survey by Technology Business Research of 30 operators reveals that 73 percent expect managed service providers to take on a multiplicity of complex issues during ICT transformation.
Tasks include selecting and integrating new technologies such as NFV, SDN, and cloud data centers; implementing cloud architecture transformation while protecting current assets; managing clouds; and improving security.
Most – 60 percent – also say managed services providers should be capable of consolidating and integrating IT and networks, as well as migrating different complex systems. As NFV and SDN deployment grows in momentum, minimizing the impact of transformation on production systems through effective management has become vital.
Transforming for success
Huawei's managed services for ICT transformation help operators manage the highly complex transformation process to achieve commercial success.
Managed services cover operational and technological transformation, and support business transformation. Customers are free to define the service scope they require in the following categories:
O&M transformation: establishes service-oriented automated operations; satisfies NFV/SDN requirements on ICT integration and operations; and involves optimizing organization, processes, tools, and platforms.
Technology transformation: includes network infrastructure virtualization and software-defined infrastructure, data center cloudification; application transformation; and resource application, service scheduling, and allocation. Future architecture will host three clouds: telecom, support, and business.
Business transformation: covers Huawei's support for business transformation, including BES technology for business process optimization, including management of the following: markets, customer relationships, billing, and third-party content providers. Huawei also provides consultation services to help operators innovate business in vertical industries, build operator capabilities and platforms, and aggregate third-party applications.
Operators can acquire new revenue streams more efficiently and at a lower risk, because the Huawei business model is both flexible and competitive.
Huawei's vision is to create an open innovation alliance. We invite operators that use our services to join this alliance so they can benefit from the growth of the ecosystem.
Transformation management requires a transformation steering committee to first define mechanisms for communicating, reporting, and assessing targets. This ensures the four main transformation stages outlined below are managed and the transformation plan is executed as scheduled:
Stage 1: Business analysis – involves understanding customers' business vision and strategic demands; knowing the market; collecting technical, operational, and service data; and managing an expert team comprising members from different parties.
Detailed analysis will be based on industry standards (eTOM/TAM) as well as Huawei and its partners' best practices. The findings will be used for designing system architecture and planning architecture roadmaps.
Stage 2: Transformation solution design and planning – specifies detailed requirements and plans for centralization, virtualization, and cloudification at the infrastructure level; includes evaluating application availability, relevance, and compatibility with the cloud at the applications level. Stage 2 also involves defining how to use a public cloud, and mapping out detailed project plans, including a phased implementation plan and acceptance criteria.
Stage 3: Transformation implementation – covers plans for implementing cloud infrastructure and migrating applications, including reconstructing organizational and process flows and reconfiguring tools and platforms. Commercially, it includes signing agreements with partners, and setting up the ecosystem. The transformation steering committee and various project management organizations supervise the quality of the service to ensure each stage's objectives are met, control costs, and mitigate risks.
Stage 4: Transformation results review – evaluates whether transformation goals are reached, and involves preparing for the next cycle.
Three big benefits
Operations transformation based on Huawei's open integrated operational model simplifies management, thereby enabling unified multi-vendor SLA management, improving operational efficiency and quality, and promoting organizational change.
Technology transformation based on Huawei's open cloud technology maximizes IT potential to accelerate innovation, meet diverse customer needs, and enhance the customer experience.
Business transformation support based on Huawei's open alliance integrates operators into the digital service ecosystem, aggregates multiple partners' services, enables low-risk and rapid entry to market, and secures continuous revenue streams.