Huawei's Intelligent Cloud-Network Builds the Foundation for Smart Cities

More than 170 countries around the world have formulated digital strategies and plans. At the core is the Smart City — the link between the digital economy, digital society, and digital government. Huawei's intelligent cloud-network builds a connectivity foundation for Smart Cities by delivering cloud intelligence, computing power, and data to a range of industries.

The Smart City Is Key for Digitalization

As digital technologies, such as cloud computing, big data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to advance, the tide of digitalization is sweeping the world. To date, more than 170 countries and regions have outlined their digital strategies and plans.

The EU has published the 'Digital Compass', which focuses on digitally transforming enterprises and building sustainable digital infrastructure. China has announced the 'Digital China' strategy to build a digital society, improve digital public services, and create a sound digital ecosystem. The US has published a list of Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET), aiming to consolidate its leadership in this sphere. Countries throughout the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Africa have also prepared comprehensive digital strategies and programs, including Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, UAE's Centennial 2071, Thailand's Digital Economy and Society Development, Singapore's Smart Nation, South Africa's National Development Plan 2030, and Morocco's Digital Morocco 2025, among others.

Cities are the pinnacle of our civilization and represent a crucial node in digital development. How well we execute national digital strategies will depend on the sound development of Smart Cities. The UN predicts that the global urbanization rate will reach 67.2% by 2050, with 6.252 billion people living in cities. And so, the Smart City will become the essential link between the digital economy, digital society, and digital government.

The Intelligent Cloud-Network Is the Foundation for Building a Smart City

Most vertical industries are migrating to the cloud — a sure sign of urban digitalization. By the end of 2021, over 80% of global enterprises had migrated their services to the cloud. However, if we want to transfer the intelligence, computing power, and data from the cloud to every person, home, and organization, we need more powerful networks. This will redefine the ways we live and work.

To build Smart Cities, the cloud is the core, and the network is the key, which means advanced cloud network infrastructure is required. That's why Huawei has designed an intelligent cloud-network that can connect and enable the cloud. The cloud-network transmits the intelligence, data, and computing power from the cloud to industries, building a connectivity foundation for the Smart City.

So, what makes the intelligent cloud-network unique?

1. Network digitalization: The cloud-network digitally senses the network status, abstracts and models it in the digital world, and centrally distributes the information to the cloud. This enables centralized cloud management and real-time network-wide status visualization.

2. Network intelligence: After networks are digitalized, new technologies like AI and big data can be used to increase the level of intelligence on the cloud-network. This enables the intelligent, balanced scheduling of network and cloud resources as well as intelligent network O&M. It also makes network troubleshooting a lot more efficient. Plus, this approach increases network security protection by deploying intelligent security defense.

3. Network as a service (NaaS): Users can subscribe to network services in one click, making the network more efficient alongside cloud agility. The intelligent cloud-network opens up network programming, interconnecting with cloud services to respond to different service requirements. In addition, it integrates and enhances cloud-network security.

Huawei's intelligent cloud-network solution also incorporates a range of comprehensive sub-solutions for Smart Cities. This includes CloudCampus 3.0, CloudWAN 3.0, CloudFabric 3.0, and HiSec 3.0, which help cities migrate to and capitalize on the cloud.

Intelligent Cloud-Networks Enable Industries

The intelligent cloud-network solution brings profound changes to the network architecture, converges the cloud and network, and facilitates the efficient flow of city data and computing power. It unleashes potential data value, enables a wide range of industries, facilitates modern urban management, enriches urban applications, and promotes the development of the digital economy.

Today, Huawei's intelligent cloud-network is helping many cities around the world go digital.

· Abu Dhabi: Making the City Safer

Abu Dhabi is committed to building the world's first 'true smart city' by evolving from an energy economy to a digital economy. The 2021 report by the International Institute for Management and Development (IMD) in Lausanne and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) ranked Abu Dhabi as the 'smartest city' in the Middle East and North Africa and 28th globally.

Ubiquitous Telecommunications Technology (UTT) — a leading provider of smart city services — built a number of smart residential buildings on Abu Dhabi's AI Reem Island. It used Huawei's intelligent cloud-network and cloud campus solutions, deploying a non-blocking intelligent gate control network and a closed-circuit television (CCTV) network. The project ensures the security and reliability of data transmission for the smart community, attracting residents from all over the world.

· Thailand: Building a Friendly Hospital

The Siriraj Hospital is the oldest and largest hospital in Thailand and one of the busiest medical centers in Southeast Asia. It has a capacity of over 2000 beds and more than three million patients are treated here every year. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Siriraj Hospital has been at the forefront of fighting the virus, thus facing increasing operational pressures. The hospital urgently needed digital technologies to improve services and become more efficient.

Siriraj chose Huawei's intelligent cloud-network that integrates 5G and Wi-Fi 6 technologies to support its smart healthcare applications, such as auxiliary diagnosis and unstaffed vehicles. 5G ensures a low latency and high network security, while Wi-Fi 6 networking offers seamless wireless coverage. This allows doctors and nurses to record diagnosis and treatment data through mobile terminals anytime and anywhere. Patients can also communicate with their friends and families via video calls.

· UAE: Shifting Education to the Cloud

The UAE has launched the "UAE Centennial 2071", aiming to become one of the most technologically advanced countries by its centenary. One of the core parts of this plan is to increase investment in education. In the meantime, the demand for online education soared during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Ankabut — UAE's advanced national research and education network — has upgraded its technical architecture, management model, and business model.

Ankabut has adopted Huawei's intelligent cloud-network hyper-converged data center network solution. This has allowed Ankabut to provide seamless connections within and between data centers for physical, virtual, or container-based workloads and applications based on the SDN architecture. The solution builds an intelligent, simplified, ultra-broadband, secure, and open digital network platform that supports cloud-based education services. These include interactive teaching and large-scale online massive open online courses (MOOCs) for 35 education institutions and 80 campuses in the UAE.

· Thailand: Interconnecting Finance

The Government Savings Bank (GSB) of Thailand strives to become an all-digital social bank, providing customers with innovative financial products as well as high-quality and secure financial assurance. For this, GSB required a robust network infrastructure to ensure that its 1060 branches can operate intelligently, efficiently, and securely.

Huawei's intelligent cloud-network solution has helped GSB build a powerful cloud network. The SD-WAN solution interconnects the headquarters, branches, and multiple clouds. It delivers real-time system synchronization and seamless data transmission, ensuring service continuity, efficiency, and stability across all branches. Employees in any branch location can access the same resources as those at HQ, providing consistent financial services for 25 million customers.

· Philippines: Deploying Faster Internet

The Philippines actively develops digital industries such as e-commerce, live broadcast, social media, and HD video to boost its digital economy. In this context, high-speed networks are essential for both enterprises and individuals. Converge — a local network infrastructure provider — initially used coaxial cables to provide cable TV and Internet access services for customers in Manila. However, the original network could no longer support the emerging services and users' expectations of network quality.

Based on the intelligent cloud-network WAN solution, Huawei has built an intelligent, ultra-broadband, and simplified high-speed fiber network for Converge. The NetEngine ultra-large capacity platform transmits video services with high-bandwidth, uses hierarchical quality of service (QoS) for refined scheduling based on users and services, and introduces multiple authentication modes for integrated user access across the entire network. Today, Converge has become the optimal network provider in the Philippines, serving tens of millions of Internet users.

The Intelligent Cloud-Network IPv6 Enhanced Helps Smart Cities Evolve

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a next-generation Internet technology, which will be key for future innovation. As cities grow, there is increasing demand for the Internet of Things (IoT). By 2030, there could be 100 billion IoT devices around the world. Compared with IPv4, IPv6 provides exponentially more IP addresses, allocating a unique address to each terminal and device. This will be crucial for massive urban connectivity. 

IPv6 Enhanced is an innovative, integrated application based on IPv6. It draws on the scalability of IPv6 packets to enhance network programmability, certainty, and intelligent O&M, customizing the network experience and assurance for applications and users in different cities.

In government service scenarios, IPv6 Enhanced facilitates network programming and delivers SRv6 for one-hop access to multiple clouds, network provisioning in minutes, and fast service rollout. In industrial control scenarios, IPv6 Enhanced provides a deterministic experience through its network slicing technology. This delivers the same level of network quality as users would access on a private network with a one-hop latency below 30 μs for precise control. For video conferencing, IPv6 Enhanced improves intelligent network O&M and provides in-band flow measurement to supervise the video service quality in real time, ensuring smooth remote communication.

Huawei's intelligent cloud-network supports IPv6 Enhanced to facilitate the continuous evolution of Smart Cities as they go digital. IPv6 Enhanced has been widely recognized in the industry. More than 30 Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) members, including Huawei, have participated in the formulation of related standards. So far, there are over 100 commercial cases in various industries.

Huawei will continue to provide leading ICT solutions for Smart City development. We will cooperate with customers and partners to build a connectivity foundation for Smart Cities through the intelligent cloud-network, which will pave the way for IP on Everything, unleash the full potential of connectivity, enable service innovation, and benefit thousands of industries, creating a better future for Smart Cities.