Intent-Driven Networking Maximizes Business Value

Many enterprises are prioritizing digitization to compete in today’s industries. According to a recent Economist Intelligence Unit survey, 40 percent of CEOs rank digital transformation as their top priority.

Enterprises are looking to gain significant business value through their digital transformation. They are adopting digital to meet customer expectations for a Real-time, On demand, All online, DIY, and Social (ROADS) experience during every interaction with the company. They are also reinventing business processes and automating decision making to increase operational efficiency, quickly launch new services and cut costs.

In addition, enterprises are embracing digital to increase connectivity throughout their operations from production and logistics through to sales and marketing. This provides access to data and insights from across the organization to help shape business innovation. Furthermore, digitization can free up the traditional workforce to focus on the business’ core competencies and innovation.

With digital transformation well underway in companies across industries, the enterprise network is key to overhauling business processes, creating digital links with customers and redefining business models to drive innovation.

However, many enterprises are struggling to maintain their edge with their current networks which are complex and not continuously aligned with today’s business demands. The aging networks were designed for a physical world and require significant manual Operations and Maintenance (O&M) which stifles an enterprise’s ability to meet customer demands in a dynamic digital environment.

To overcome these challenges, Huawei is introducing the concept of Intent-Driven Networking (IDN) to connect today’s digital and physical worlds. IDN uses Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data analytics, and cloud technologies to build digital networks that automatically align with a user’s ‘business intent.’ Huawei’s IDN approach takes networking to the next level in terms of intelligence, simplicity, ultra-broadband, openness, and security.

IDN Enables User-centric Networks to Enhance the Customer Experience

IDN enables enterprises to shift from a fragmented network to a closed-loop network that can dynamically monitor, identify, predict, and respond to a user’s needs. Using AI and Big Data analytics, IDN allows enterprises to move from reactive O&M to a proactive system that optimizes network performance and availability. By transitioning from a skill-dependent network to an automated and AI-driven network, IDN eliminates time-consuming manual processes, helping enterprises increase efficiency, rapidly deliver new services, and free valuable team resources to focus on innovation.

Ultimately, IDN helps enterprises move towards a user-centric network that can keep pace with business demands for a seamless customer experience, improved operational efficiency, and accelerated business innovation.

Intelligent Predictive Maintenance Optimizes User Experience

A leading insurance company in the top 20 of Forbes 2017 Global 2000 has over 3,000 branches which do not have full-time IT engineers on site. Using a traditional networking approach, the company’s maintenance was reactive and the head office sent engineers to rectify a fault when it occurred, sometimes causing business disruption until the fault was resolved.

Leveraging AI and Big Data analytics, IDN monitors the quality of a user’s experience in real-time and performs predictive analysis to ensure services levels are being met. IDN’s predictive intelligence rapidly identifies any anomalies and automatically reconfigures the network to maintain performance.

In the case of the multi-branch enterprise, Huawei’s solution enabled IT engineers to quickly and remotely rectify faults. In fact, IDN solutions can automatically find up to 85 percent of potential issues across an enterprise campus network based on a Huawei study, meaning that the components or system can be fixed before an outage occurs to avoid impacting the user experience.

Simplicity Fuels Business Agility

In the digital era, success will be defined by an enterprise’s ability to rapidly respond to changing market conditions and customer needs. In this environment, IT teams need their networks to adapt quickly to accommodate evolving business demands.

IDN provides this agility by simplifying the network in terms of architecture, protocols, sites, and O&M. By fully automating network services throughout their lifecycle and converging multiple networks into a simplified network, enterprises can rapidly provision new services while reducing Operating Expenses (OPEX) by 80 percent.

In addition, leveraging IDN means enterprises no longer need to carry out repetitive manual operational tasks and can focus on higher level strategic initiatives that drive business value.

Unleashing the Power of Ultra-broadband

The digital world will be defined by fast and easy connectivity to everything and everyone, at any time and from anywhere. IDN supports ultra-broadband to enable massive connectivity, low latency, and high bandwidth, helping enterprises deliver rich customer and employee experiences, whether it’s video conferencing from mobile devices, streaming 4K videos from remote locations, or accessing AR/VR applications.

Openness Meets Vertical Industry Demands

To succeed in a fast-moving and competitive digital economy, enterprises need an open network ecosystem that enables them to adapt their digital strategy and approach to meet the demands of their specific vertical industry. Huawei IDN’s open APIs make it possible for the network to connect seamlessly to third-party Big Data analytics and cloud platforms, to enable enterprises to expand their capabilities through an ecosystem of leading-edge partners.

Proactive Security Protects Against Cyber Threats

There is no doubt that when it comes to security, enterprises cannot afford to stay still. Alongside the increased cost of cyber crime — which averages more than USD 17 million for organizations in industries like financial services, utilities, and energy — attackers are getting smarter.

Security is an integral part of IDN. The end-to-end visibility of IDN allows threats to be detected no matter where they originate from, while AI enables automated sensing and detection of any anomalies and takes proactive measures to quickly defend the network. In fact, these networks can reduce the mean-time-to-detect and mean-time-to-respond to security threats by 90 percent compared to traditional solutions, to mitigate the risk of attack.

IDN Drives Business Value in a Digital World

With a new IDN approach, forward-thinking enterprises can move towards a network that leverages cloud, AI, and Big Data technologies to monitor, identify, and respond in real-time to changing business demands, such as delivering new business services and applications, meeting security policies, and adapting operational processes.

Enterprises that adopt this approach will achieve rapid alignment of the network to business needs, resulting in a seamless customer experience. At the same time, by deploying an intelligent, simplified, ultra-broadband, open, and secure network, enterprises will improve operational efficiency and innovation to drive true business value in the connected world of the future.

Originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal