How Innofactory Uses Huawei Solutions to Provide Customers with Stable and Energy-Efficient Networks

The German government regards the nationwide expansion of gigabit networks by 2025 as a priority. The aim is to expand fibre-optic infrastructure in every region and municipality.

Background

Fibre-optic networks, microwave transmission, 5G—these are the networking terms of the future. A future in which campuses that can ensure high-performance, high-availability and secure connections are becoming increasingly crucial. At the same time, IT departments are shrinking due to a shortage of specialists, and struggle to ensure 24x7 support for their networks on their own accord. Innofactory closes this gap with its Managed Network Services as an extended toolset for IT teams in healthcare, industry, logistics, and public administration. Innofactory plans, installs, and operates the data networks and assumes full responsibility for availability—performing updates, applying necessary patches, and adapting the infrastructure to new requirements.

Challenge

The pandemic has caused many Innofactory customers to require higher bandwidths as well as more stable Internet connections to deliver digital business applications and cloud services for employees working from home. High-performance infrastructure will continue to be a crucial demand due to the trend towards New Work and the desire of many employees for flexible workplace concepts.

At the same time, more and more production processes are digitised. Many plants and machines are now equipped with sensors and communicate with each other or with other network participants through the Internet of Things (IoT). They inform the production control centre about their capacity utilisation or their manufacturers about upcoming maintenance intervals.

In many office and production environments, the performance of existing network solutions was no longer sufficient to meet the increasing demands of Innofactory customers. Individual components could not be configured individually, nor did they have the necessary security certificates. Therefore, Innofactory is continuously looking for more powerful and, above all, secure network solutions. As a communications and networking specialist, the company assumes responsibility for its customers’ networks, which means that the highest security standards must be met.

Solution

A reliable network is necessary to ensure that digital processes can run in real time and users can access them at any time. Campus networks based on current technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 or 5G meet this demand. They offer lower latency than wired installations, cover larger areas, are less susceptible to interference, and allow more devices to be connected simultaneously. With this in mind, Innofactory has been using various Huawei solutions in customer projects since autumn 2020. Examples include CloudCampus 3.0 and the network management and control system iMaster NCE, which allows networks to be managed more efficiently and configured individually down to the device level.

Advantages

With the help of Huawei's CloudCampus 3.0, Innofactory is implementing high-performance campus networks for its customers, and providing fast access to cloud solutions and an optimised user experience. Huawei iMaster NCE ensures secure network operation. Digital transformation means that the number of network participants can increase dramatically—and with it, the number of potential security threats. It is therefore important to monitor all devices connected to the network 24/7 and be able to shut them down immediately in the event of a security breach. With Huawei’s iMaster NCE, this works automatically. In addition, the solution allows for the seamless deployment of other security tools.

Innofactory is committed to putting even more focus on sustainability in new hardware, vowing to replace older network components with energy-efficient solutions from Huawei. This will gradually reduce the energy consumption of the networks, both in the company's own data centres and in customer installations. And Innofactory is able to complete its own projects on time despite global crises and the associated supply-chain bottlenecks. The driving factor behind this is Huawei Fast Track in Germany —this programme guarantees the delivery of required network components within two weeks.

About Innofactory

Innofactory GmbH, founded in 2004, plans and operates data transport networks for the increasing demands of tomorrow—powerful, secure, and highly available. Today it is a global player, serving international customers with intelligent production in industry 5.0, smart healthcare, and fully automated logistics hubs and meets the highest security requirements for public-sector clients. Currently, Innofactory connects more than 375,000 workplaces as part of 1,800 projects. For more information, please visit www.innofactory.de.