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Cloud services adoption in South Africa has grown significantly, grabbing 65 percent share of the market in entire Africa. The sudden, explosive growth is driving digital transformation across industries and supporting enterprises in the country. For telecom operators aspiring to build on this opportunity, cloud-network convergence is the way forward. The convergence not only allows them to deliver integrated services to enterprise customers and industries but also helps them transform into new-age digital service providers (DSPs). However, cloud introduces several challenges to existing resources at the enterprises, and addressing these challenges is integral to realize the value of the cloud investments.
MTN, the leading telecom provider in South Africa, has selected Huawei Intelligent Cloud-Network solution to help its customers address the several challenges associated with cloud adoption.
According to MTN, the typical concerns associated with cloud migration include: realize the rapid monetization of cloud services; realize refined business assurance through network slicing; realize accurate SLA experience; and provide cloud network integration ability to schedule.
With Huawei Intelligent Cloud-Network solution, MTN South Africa delivers a cloud-oriented business network, helping industries accelerate their digital transformation efforts on its secure cloud infrastructure.
Huawei’s solution implements a new type of service network capable of both cloud-based network migration and cloud-network-security integration, the company said.
The intelligent cloud network provides MTN with several capabilities such as ubiquitous integrated scheduling, compatibility with old/new networks, and deterministic experience with tenant-level slicing as well as visualized, manageable, elastic & lossless scaling.
Based on the IPv6 Enhanced Innovations (IPE), the solution also supports large number of terminals while also delivering differentiated SLAs, network programmability, visualization, and high security. The SRv6-based network programming and cloud path steering helps in reducing the latency by 20%. With cloud network automation, the solution also enables one-stop ordering, reducing the time to market for the provider.
“MTN South Africa’s intelligent cloud network solution based on IPv6+ technology is committed to creating an intelligent, converged & congestion free, simplified architecture, scalable, and always on CASSI target network,” company officials said.
MTN has adopted a phased approach to building the intelligent network. The first focus is fiber build-out. The CAT1 fiber coverage in South Africa currently stands above 90%. Next, MTN will focus on the entire network design and service provisioning. The third is to make it SDN ready with NCE new build, SRv6 deployment and network protocol transformation.
Currently, MTN can provide the following capabilities on the network:
One-stop connection to cloud: The NCE+SRv6 solution helps MTN to break through the network E2E process barriers, realize online provisioning and agile delivery of cloud network services, and enable one-stop connection to multiple clouds. The provisioning period of the cloud private line has been shortened to one month from several months.
One-stop services: Unified entry for self-service and to enhance customer experience; one-stop cloud-network business ordering with visualization of resources; zero wait after hardware install; visualization of on-service tenant quality; and self-service fault diagnosis.
Deterministic Service Assurance: NCE multi-factor path calculation and SRv6 programmability are used to provide flexible path optimization functions, enabling different path delay visibility and path selection on demand. The SLA multi-dimensional analysis capabilities can discover network problems and support business expansion in advance.
In future, MTN will continue to cooperate with Huawei to maximize the value of resources through the intelligent cloud-network solution to build cloud-network integrated service architecture, MTN said. The collaboration will help the provider achieve wide coverage, low consumption, low latency, high flexibility and reduced TCO. The SRv6-based network will, in turn, help accelerate the digital transformation journey of its customers across South Africa.
Rajani Baburajan
