Building Operators' Independent Integration Capabilities

As telecom networks develop, operators' network architecture is more open, but it also faces challenges such as multi-vendor management, process coordination, vertical integration, inconsistent data models and incomplete ecosystem. Standardizing the process, increasing the integration efficiency, strengthening professional skills of personnel and improving independent integration capabilities are urgent problems for operators to solve.

History of Independent Integration

Independent integration means that operators can assemble and integrate each component of the NFV network by relying on their own capabilities, and independently and efficiently complete the NFV network construction. Independent integration capabilities are not built overnight, which require long-term technology accumulation and manpower investment. Up to now, the independent integration of telecom networks has undergone three phases:

• Phase I: This is the phase of integrating software with hardware, where operators completely rely on a complete set of hardware/software devices supplied by equipment vendors, and also rely on the vendors to build NFV networks. Therefore, operators have low independent integration capabilities.
• Phase II: As software and hardware are gradually decoupled, operators introduce the primary system integrator (PSI) who can coordinate and supervise the NFV network construction. In this phase, operators rely heavily on PSI and their independent integration capabilities are improved but limited.
• Phase III: According to the service requirements, operators introduce third-party system integration products or develop them independently, and gradually cultivate and improve their independent integration capabilities, master core integration technologies, and improve their competitiveness.

How to Improve Independent Integration Capabilities

Operators need to improve their independent integration capabilities from the following aspects:

• Formulate a standard integration process to specify the responsibilities of related parties in each phase of the process and the document templates required in each phase.
• Build a professional team for independent integration. The team should not only have professional technical skills, but also accumulate rich experience in integration.
• Formulate technical specifications and acceptance criteria, or introduce international standards to reduce the difficulty in multi-vendor integration.
• Develop the tools related to integration or introduce the tools from third-party vendors to implement integration automation and improve the efficiency.
• Construct an integration center and introduce the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) or DevOps concept to gradually improve the standardization, automation, and intelligence of the integration, achieve full automation of applications verification, deployment and launch, and accelerate the innovation and implementation of new services.

Recommended Model for the Integration Center

A recommended reference model for building the integration center is shown in Fig. 1. Operators can build an integration center at the headquarters as a platform for integrating technologies and resources, which can implement pre-integration verification of the devices of their partners. After passing the pre-integration verification, the partner's devices can run trials and stress tests in the pre-production environment. Finally, commercial deployment or version upgrade in the production environment can be completed in the production center.

In addition, the integration center supports multi-project management. The resource pool of the integration center is divided into several logical test environments, and each project orchestrates its own pipeline and scheduling strategy. Integration tests and verifications of multiple projects can be carried out at the same time, which greatly improves resource utilization of the integration center.

Responsibilities of the Integration Center

After the completion of the integration center, it will fulfil the following three responsibilities:

• Pre-integration verification: According to network construction requirements, operators implement the integration verification of the devices or components from multiple vendors, discover and solve multi-vendor interoperability and reliability problems in advance, and reduce commercial risks.
• Software/hardware product certification: Operators complete the integration verification of shortlisted devices in advance, gradually build and expand the enterprise ecosystem through the certification mechanism, and promote the collaborative development of the enterprise industry chain.
• Building a CI/CD work chain: Operators introduce CI/CD to realize a new network construction mode involving integration, testing and deployment.

Value of the Integration Center

Building the integration center can bring multi-dimensional value to operators.

• Promoting coordinated development of NFV network construction: Independent integration is a major trend in the development of operators. Through the integration center, operators can effectively integrate personnel, self-developed products/tools, third-party devices and technical experience to drive the integrated and coordinated growth of NFV network construction.
• Accelerating new service innovation: The incubation of innovative services requires operators to respond quickly and have sufficient independent integration capabilities. The powerful continuous delivery capability ensures that enterprises can rapidly respond to changes in market demand for innovation services, grasp the direction of technological development, and take the initiative in the market.
• Improving core competitiveness of operators: The integration center introduces the concept of automation and intelligence, and gradually evolves to DevOps to ensure that the R&D, O&M, and quality monitoring departments work together efficiently. This not only enhances independent capabilities of operators, but also gradually improves their core competitiveness.
• Expanding the ecosystem/industry chain: Independent integration capabilities help operators select partners and expand the ecosystem according to their own needs.

Relying on years of technology accumulation and industry experience, ZTE has specially developed digital integration center products for cloud networks. With the project-based management, the products implement fully automatic NFV network construction by introducing task orchestration and workflow orchestration. Operators can introduce ZTE's digital integration center products to rapidly build new NFV network integration centers that meet their requirements through the "independent + cooperative" mode, and gradually establish an enterprise-independent and controllable integration service system.