Huawei launches SDN-based IoT platform

Chinese networking giant Huawei has unveiled its ‘Agile Internet of Things Solution’, which it says is based on software defined networking, at its Network Congress show in Shanghai.

Huawei is positioning the IoT platform as an enabler for IoT device makers and the bridge between the device and the network, with an emphasis on openness and flexibility.

The platform consists of three components. Lite OS is an open source OS designed specifically for IoT devices by having as small a power and storage footprint as possible. Agile IoT Gateway is a durable, embedded access router designed to bridge sensor and IP networks. Agile Controller enables unified management of IoT terminals, gateways, computing resources, applications and data.

“IoT is the future of our increasingly digitized world and networks are key to driving value creation for enterprises,” said Li Xianyin, GM of Enterprise Gateway Product Domain at Huawei (pictured). “With Huawei’s IoT technologies and offerings, we hope to support the digital transformation of traditional industries and the development of the IoT ecosystem.

The ‘Agile’ brand featured strongly at the Huawei networking jamboree with the launch of Agile Network 3.0, of which the IoT platform is the highlight. There was also lots of talk of “Business Driven ICT Infrastructure (BDII), which seems to be a further nod towards openness and collaboration.

“Over the last three years, Huawei has been involved in a number of in-depth technological collaborations with our global industry partners in IoT,” said Liu Shaowei, President of the Switch and Enterprise Communication Product Line at Huawei. “We have developed a series of IoT solutions that have already been applied to buildings, electricity meters, vehicles, gymnasiums, factories, retail outlets, and street lights. In line with our approach to provide BDII, Huawei will continue to work with more partners to launch solutions based on our Agile Network architecture for different vertical industries.”

In a further nod to SDN Huawei also launched its Cloud Fabric 3.0 Architecture, which promises the usual SDN goodness such as easy scalability, flexibility, control, efficiency, etc. “With core infrastructure carrying cloud services, enterprises are facing new challenges within data centers,” said Shaowei. “Our latest Cloud Fabric 3.0 is developed to help enterprise build data centers that are elastic and scalable to support evolving business needs.”