Huawei looks to the cloud for MWC inspiration

Ericsson has gone for IoT, Nokia is gunning for smart cities and now Huawei has unveiled its script for Mobile World Congress; cloud.

It should perhaps come as little surprise, but Huawei is leaning on the cloud to give it the edge over rivals at the annual extravaganza. The first act will of course focus on how caring and philanthropic the Chinese giant is, concentrating on the idea of Cloud Central Office (CloudCO) architecture standards and the standardization projects.

According to the Broadband Forum, CloudCO is a recasting of the Central Office hosting infrastructure that utilizes SDN, NFV and Cloud technologies to support network functions. Right now Huawei is attempting to push forward standardization project in this area, which it believes is important for providing references for operators in reconstructing broadband network architectures. These standards take the industry one step closer towards implementing cloud networks.

At the risk of getting very technical, the new standards redefine access and metro networks to build a cloud broadband platform with open interfaces, enabling operators to deliver new services effectively and to shorten service provisioning time. In theory, traditional NE functions are decoupled and then migrated to the cloud. The standards also define northbound APIs to allow automatic lifecycle management over all services, and support for automatic service provisioning, network deployment, and maintenance.

Looking at the focus from a more holistic level, it is quite an interesting move from Huawei. While the wannabees are focusing on more on the usecase side of the industry, the money makers for the operators, Huawei is prioritising more core, network orientated messaging. The difference in approaches is certainly an thought-provoking one, but who are we to question the vendor which dominated the 4G era.

Building on the philanthropic message, Huawei has also announced the initiation of its ‘Slice Mall’ project which is based on the idea of ‘slicing as a service and as a commodity’. With network slicing set to be a key benefit for operators looking to monetize virtualized networks, Huawei claims this new initiative will be focused on helping the operators commercialize 5G slicing and sell the slices into various industry verticals.

Three of the major network vendors have drawn back the curtain on their plans, now we are just waiting on ZTE to complete the set. Keep an eye out on Sunday afternoon.