The 5G industry has a huge market space. In the context of stable competition in China and slow growth of ToC services, the revenue increase of ToB services has become a key to future development of operators. ToB users come from a wide variety of industries, and the traditional O&M mode centered on network equipment is difficult to meet E2E requirements of ToB industry users. Therefore, it is necessary to explore a new O&M paradigm.
ToB O&M Requirements
ToB networking features a variety of network topologies and devices, and enterprises are end users of the ToB network. Enterprise users expect the network to be stable and reliable, easy to operate and maintain, and applications-centered lightweight management to meet their needs of stable service operation. According to the survey of various ToB industries, rapid delivery, remote managed services, fast recovery and VIP terminal SLA guarantee have become their core O&M requirements.
With more and more industrial ToB applications, leveraging the advantages of 5G infrastructure to meet ToB O&M requirements is a new topic for operators and equipment vendors. Therefore, a turkey solution with a centralized and professional remote O&M system for operators and a smart and simplified O&M portal system for enterprise users is more suitable for operation and management of ToB 5G private networks.
ToBeEasy: Simplified O&M Solution
With decades of experience in professional O&M, ZTE has launched ToBeEasy, a simplified O&M solution based on the existing O&M solution, as shown in Fig. 1. ToBeEasy provides more choices and flexible ways for ToB applications.
ToBeEasy based on the concept of simplicity, centralization and intelligence improves the efficiency and intelligence of O&M, enables network delivery within hours, and provides active network guarantee. It uses a new cloud-native architecture and provides multi-level multi-dimensional O&M solutions for operators and enterprise users based on network management, centered on service management, and combined with atomic capability exposure. The ToBeEasy solution consists of three parts:
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UME R88 centralized O&M system: It provides end-to-end management capabilities across the RAN, core network, cloud resource, bearer network, fixed network and CPE, and truly achieves unified cloud-network management.
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IDOS enterprise O&M portal: It provides enhanced service O&M and enterprise-oriented connections. Taking the service perspective as the core, it analyzes the status of the network and services, monitors the service trend in real time, and ensures normal operation of service connections in the ToB campus.
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ZXeLMT local NE O&M: It provides professional emergency O&M from the perspective of a single NE, and has basic O&M capabilities such as on-site data configuration, signaling trace, performance monitoring and fault diagnosis.
The ToB private network O&M not only manages end-to-end network devices but also focuses on 5G-based industrial applications. ZTE's ToBeEasy simplified O&M solution designed for ToB networks has the following features:
—Plug-and-play: The devices are pre-assembled with one click on the production line. The whole equipment is delivered out of the factory and powered in the enterprise, and re-configured according to the on-site environment. Thus ToB products can be delivered from production to delivery without design, installation and debugging, and support plug-and-play. The auto integration center (AIC) tool is used for delivery automation, which shortens the time to service deployment to hours.
—Remote managed services: Remote ToB O&M systems are deployed in a centralized way by ZTE or the operator to provide remote network fault detection and handling capabilities and guarantee the network quality. This provides enterprise users with O&M services, and reduces the pressure on network maintenances. This also relieves enterprise users from O&M services and reduces their pressure on network maintenance.
—Rapid recovery: When network faults occur in the system, three ToB emergency operations are suggested to enterprise users: restart, switch over and re-installation, to guide the users to recover most of the network faults quickly. In addition, one-click collection of system logs can be used to backhaul the logs when the fault occurs, so that the fault can be analyzed later and the network system can be improved and optimized.
—Terminal SLA guarantee: By deploying the enterprise O&M portal and lightweight big data system, the network connection SLA quality of key terminals can be monitored in real time. This provides enterprise users with delay, bandwidth and other key indicators, meeting their needs for monitoring the network quality of key terminals.
—Capability exposure: By exposing capabilities that involve network equipment, enterprise connection service management, cloud management and industry app deployment, the solution satisfies operators and enterprises' O&M requirements for ToB connection services and private network equipment. It also supports API orchestration and small program development, helps enterprises and operators with low-code self-development, and empowers the industry.
—Ultimate security: Based on the professional security management capability of the communication network, combined with the requirements of relevant security standards of various industries, the solution delivers a series of capabilities such as authority management, data protection and security domain isolation. It provides operators and enterprises with a reliable, trusted and controllable service environment.
Since its ToBeEasy simplified O&M solution was proposed in September 2021, ZTE has worked with a number of operators, enterprises and enterprise integrators at home and abroad to deploy the solution in many industry fields, helping them simplify network management, save O&M costs, and accelerate industrial digital transformation.
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