PSI Service Facilitates Turk Telekom's Digital and Intelligent Transformation

Turk Telekom, the largest integrated telecom operator in Turkey, has more than 23 million mobile users and more than 10 million fixed-line voice users. Its user traffic is growing rapidly, with a compound annual growth rate of 38%. As global telecom networks evolve to the cloud era, it is urgent for Turk Telekom to have a cloud transformation to meet the increasing user needs. At present, Turk Telekom adopts siloed architecture for its network, and the deployment of APPs is bundled with the platform, resulting in inflexible and inefficient service deployment. Therefore, Turk Telekom urgently needs to build a Common NFVI resource pool based on the third-party mainstream cloud platform to support the rapid launch of existing and future service applications.

ZTE has provided end-to-end prime system integration (PSI) service for building 5G trial and commercial networks in many countries such as China, India and Austria, helping customers achieve digital and intelligent network transformation. As a strategic partner of Turk Telekom, ZTE has customized the PSI service based on third-party cloud platform for Turk Telekom. Based on the Redhat OSP16 cloud platform, ZTE PSI service can integrate Turk Telekom's existing network system with Cisco network devices, ZTE cloud management system, and hardware and APPs of third-party manufacturers like Mavenir. As a prime system integrator, ZTE has established a joint project operation team together with Turk Telekom, the third-party software and hardware system suppliers, and ZTE's local delivery team to rapidly and efficiently promote commercial implementation of integrated service solutions based on mainstream third-party platforms and ensure digital and intelligent transformation of the network.

Digital Integration Center Supports Best Solution Customization and Implementation

The digital transformation of Turk Telekom's network involves a large number of third-party software and hardware manufacturers, resulting in complex networking solutions, many integration interfaces and heavy work of multi-vendor integration. Based on the best practice library of fixed and orchestratable project management and operation processes in ZTE's digital integration center, ZTE's customized solution takes full advantage of Turk Telekom's existing network systems to provide end-to-end PSI service and delivery capabilities in complex multi-vendor scenarios.

Considering the complexity and difficulty of project implementation, the project team made a systematic analysis of project requirements based on the integrated digital asset library, identified integration risks, produced and customized integrated solutions that were more suitable for customer needs, and started integration pre-verification and on-site deployment and delivery. ZTE set up an integrated project operation team at the early stage of the project, clarified the integration process and responsibility matrix, and listed the integration marketing, solution and verification work at the front of the process. In addition, ZTE also created tasks for the project in the integration asset library to achieve lossless transfer of project information from the market to the entire R&D process. The delivery capabilities of each link was fixed through digital means such as template library, user case library, experience library and automatic tools to reduce delivery risks.

It has been proved that efficient and reliable PSI service solution customized based on the digital integration platform and customers' actual requirements can achieve rapid evaluation of integration requirements and agile iteration of integration solutions, and reduce delivery risks through the digital experience database. These are the guarantees for rapid promotion and implementation of project delivery.

Third-Party Cloud Platform Enables Integration Capability Iteration and Enhancement

Turk Telekom planned to deploy multiple services in the Common NFVI resource pool, which would involve multiple vendors. After full evaluation, Turk Telekom decided to select Red Hat as its cloud platform vendor. ZTE has accumulated experience in deploying the Red Hat platform in some projects that have been successfully delivered. However, Turk Telekom's project scenario is more complicated, because it not only needs to deploy the latest OSP version of Red Hat, but also customizes and deploys the cloud management platform for the resource pool and integrates third-party network devices and many third-party APPs. With powerful third-party cloud platform integration capabilities, ZTE has adopted the template-based Red Hat cloud platform integration solution based on the digital assets of the delivered projects in the digital integration platform to automatically generate standard HLD&LLD files and integration test solutions for end-to-end integration planning and design, verification, implementation, and handover services in such a complicated scenario. This can fully meet the network construction needs of Turk Telekom to integrate multi-vendors' software and hardware on the common cloud platform. In addition, through digitized records and continuous verification during the actual project implementation, new experience in integration has been gained and added to the project database, which will provide more digital assets and experience for future project.

Remote Delivery Improves Efficiency and Reduces Integration Risks

ZTE has always advocated an open and sharing mode and is actively building a diverse and shared Openlab. There are more than 1000 servers and 600 switches in ZTE Openlab, including mainstream hardware and cloud platforms. They can provide a deployment environment for pre-integration and perform interoperability testing with mainstream vendors in the industry. Meanwhile, a demilitarized zone (DMZ) can be set to support partners' access to ZTE Openlab from external networks for integration debugging.

The overall solution of Turk Telekom's project is highly decoupled and involves many vendors and products. To improve the integration efficiency and reduce commercial risks, the project team has built a pre-integration environment in China's ZTE Openlab and Turkey's existing network, and conducted the integration verification and interoperability testing through the Openlab remote delivery center. Relying on the complete integration test environment and rich IoT integration experience of the Openlab remote delivery center, the project team has successfully implemented pre-integration verification of the solution in a remote and centralized manner. This greatly reduces the skill requirements and costs of on-site personnel, and makes a great contribution to shortening the time of on-site integration deployment, reducing TCO and commercial risks, and improving project delivery efficiency.

In constructing Turk Telekom's Common NFVI resource pool based on the third-party mainstream cloud platform, ZTE has provided end-to-end PSI service from integration design to acceptance based on the digital integration center. At present, ZTE and Turk Telekom continue to work in open and sharing mode, and continue to cooperate with Red Hat to build a cloud integration verification environment based on RedHat OCP platform in the Openlab remote delivery center to verify container cloud platform and NE functions. They will continuously develop a stable and excellent container cloud integration solution to meet microservice-based needs in the telecom industry.

In the future, Turk Telekom and ZTE will continue to carry out joint technological innovations and deepen the digital and intelligent transformation.