When Huawei won the GSM Association’s Global Mobile Award for best Service Delivery Platform (SDP) it was validation and confirmation of the company’s leading presence in the SDP sector. Keith Dyer hears from Lance Lin, Vice President of Huawei Software, how Huawei’s approach to SDP development is helping the telecoms industry succeed in overcoming the challenges it faces today
Keith Dyer:
Mr Lin, perhaps we can start with your assessment of Huawei’s position in the SDP sector today, given your recent award for best SDP at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year.
Lance Lin:
Yes, at Mobile World Congress this year in Barcelona we were honored with a very great award. We were
selected as the best SDP. This was the first time for Huawei, and also the first time for a Chinese company to win this award. We take it as one of the biggest awards in the world so we are really proud of that.
As for our position in SDP, first it is important for us to realize that the scope of SDP is wide, and the concept is a little bit more complicated than other solutions. So although there are some analyst statistics that place us as number two in the SDP market share, we really believe that in the telco market, and especially in the internet data market, we are number one.
We have several leading operator references, including the deployment of a 13 country SDP for Telefonica Latam, and all the affiliations of America Movil in 17 countries. By the end of 2009, Huawei SDP has been selected by more than 120 operators worldwide, and in the oversea market we have already entered into deployments with three Tier One operators, Vodafone, Telefonica and America Movil, and in China we have two, China Mobile and China Unicom, all of this have proven that Huawei SDP is a leading business solution and really help operators to be successful.
KD:
What are the areas of operation that your SDP solutions cover?
LL:
Huawei SDP focus on customers, very much. we partner with operators to design their service strategy, Advance Innovation Center, and with flexible business revenue share models. We have ONE-SDP framework, we see the different requirements from different operators in different markets, we realize different strategy in flexible combinations. We segment Huawei SDP into 3 major sub-solutions:
First, SDP Openness, which focus on network exposure and integration with mobile internet capabilities, buildup service ecosystem and bring with possibility of creating millions of mobile internet services.
Secondly, SDP Media provides both in-house and 3rd-party content and media management, supporting in-depth operation and bring with convergent experience of content and media services.
Thirdly, SDP WebGate, specially designed for mobile internet and provide differentiate content and service charging, precise marketing, promote controllability of the mobile internet services. We also see another stream of requirements from international operators like Vodafone and Telefonica who are keen to carry our their global strategies and share resources and knowledge in successful services among its subsidiaries, which is called multinational SDP solution.
SDP developed as a concept from service gateways like MMS and SMS gateways, so it has mainly been regarded as only related to internet data services. But in our definition we believe that the SDP framework needs to cover not only data but also voice and video. So, for example, we use our SDP framework to contain even IPTV service development.
So this is our inventory: we cover voice, data and video. Also, if you look vertically within SDP then based on a number of network enablers and integration with IT networks, we can support a wide range of applications and solutions. We break this area of applications support into three areas – applications facing the individual, home and enterprise user. Above this applications enablement, there is also demand for integration and managed services, and we think all of this falls into the big concept of the SDP as well.
Our service will cover them all, but what is also important is that we are open to partners. For example, we currently partner with Accenture within the services space, and for applications we also have our open community plan. We have over 300 partners which are already certified and are able to develop applications for our SDP. Additionally, through our co-operation with Telefonica in Latin America we have jointly authorized a host of other developers.
KD:
Do you think this combination of the scope of your operations and your openness to partnership is key to your success with SDP, and in winning the GSMA award?
LL:
According to Rob Conway, CEO of the Board, GSMA, “A remarkable 500 entries from across the global mobile ecosystem were submitted this year, all of an extremely high caliber, and the winners should be incredibly proud of their achievement”.
Huawei SDP is a real end to end business solution designed in advance technologies which enable the business success of operators that is the major reason why we could win this award.
From the technical perspective, I believe that one of the key points for a SDP should be the integration capability with legacy network components. Covering both communications technology (CT) and the IT world. This is a core strength for us because I believe we are very strong in systems integration. Importantly, we have quite a broad product line covering almost all the common VAS components and products. For example in services we have SMS, MMS, and WAP gateways, as well as support for services such as ringback tones. Then in the IT sphere, we have strong capabilities in billing, CRM, mediation and provisioning, so we are strong within all these kinds of business – covering both IT and CT. From the business perspective, the capability of our applications offering is another focus. SDP should not just about a technical platform, nowadays nobody would like to take so much risk to launch an unknown platform without seeing the future. End to end professional services and value chain cooperation are the necessary considerations for a SDP. As mentioned above, Huawei SDP is an end to end business solution taking in all the considerations of operators. It has been proven as a really helpful and successful solution for oeprators’ business transformation. This is also another reason we won the awards.
KD:
The GSMA award gives you enhanced presence in the market, do you think you already had good recognition in this market?
LL:
Yes, Huawei SDP has been quite successful in the past few years, which has been selected by more than 120 operators over 100 countries worldwide, including the 5-biggest mobile operators, Vodafone, Telefonica, America Movil, China Mobile and China Unicom, and we have successful delivered the world-first and largest multinational SDP for Telefonica covering 13 countries in LATAM. These are all the good recognition in this market, and we believe that more and more presence will be in the near future.
KD:
Operators are facing an increasingly competitive situation. What do you think is the best way operators can build out new services into the market?
LL:
As terminal vendors and internet companies are also offering so many services and applications through their app stores there is a risk for the operator in controlling the value chain, so operators need to think of a business transformation from being a dumb-pipe to be a smart channel, cooperating with the whole ecosystem to facilitate open service innovation with a faster time to market and lower capex and opex.
Sales of high end mobile phones are growing, so the demand for multimedia services or innovative services targeting high end terminals will increase. So operators need to do their service planning very carefully – targeting different groups of end user segments.
As operators need lot of cooperation from outside world, their network should be flexible enough to dynamically integrate new services. Operators need to expose their telecom capabilities, so that third parties or online developer communities can bring their innovative mash up services.
Operators are exploring all possible ways to increase their ARPU, but they also need to decrease the total cost of ownership in order to increase the margin of profit. They have to streamline their workflows and should reuse their capabilities on which they have already invested.
Operators have started exploring new business models to provide both traditional and non-traditional services. Under the trend of all-IP evolution operators are planning for more convergent, personalized and differentiated experiences. First, convergent services around digital life will be further developed. For example, multi-screen digital media, covering PC, mobile, TV and digital frames etc, will be more popular and become a basic service. Quad-play – connecting mobile voice and mobile broadband – is coming into being. Social network user profiles will take on a more important role in future services. Secondly, context-aware services based on user behaviour will be more common: for example, a reminder service based on the user’s location and preferences. Promotions and advertising services would also be more targeted, giving users only what they really want without intruding on their privacy.
To make all this happen, an open environment with a healthy ecosystem is needed, and this is the key point that Huawei SDP focuses on and addresses.
KD:
For the operators that want to go down that transformational route, what are the things they need to do to allow them to compete?
LL:
Some of the operators are still waiting to see how the market status changes. But the big operators are considering how to change their networks to become smarter, and let more service developers join and to generate more revenue from new applications. For example the recent GSMA Wholesale Community Applications initiative has been designed to develop a common set of APIs to enable service developers to deploy services across multiple networks. This is the kind of approach the industry is forming. I think some Tier One operators want to catch not only wholesale revenues but to retain control of key applications that they may consider accord well to operators’ own core competencies. For example, operators have a closer relationship with their subscribers, and generate greater loyalty compared to internet providers. They also retain key sets of information related to useage, location, and network data.
KD:
Are you a believer that operators really will be able to monetise those kinds of assets?
LL:
It really depends; theoretically, operators have a very unique ability to monetise the assets in the value chain; they have the strong customer base, they have charging facility, they have the public credit, so compared to other players in the value chain, like the terminal vendors, Internet providers etc, I believe this is the future, although I do believe this is not easy.
KD:
What makes Huawei different from other SDP providers in enabling operators to succeed in this market?
LL:
From the technical perspective, Huawei SDP offers a future-oriented open platform based on SOA architecture providing pre-built adaptors for prompt network integration; standard APIs and pre-developed templates for open service innovation; the ability to connect mass developers; an all-in-one portal for convergent presentation, and flexible business processes with BSS/OSS. Along with the platform, we also provide access to hundreds of ready-to-deploy consumer and enterprise services.
From the business perspective, Huawei SDP offers a full range of professional service support from managed services, customisation, integration, to assistant operation and service consulting and planning. Working with more than 300 top-ranking global CP/SP partners, Huawei enhances the efficiency of VAS delivery more than tenfold, from five to six a year to more than 100.
Thirdly, Huawei also provides SDP hosting centers with pre-integrated services from Huawei and third parties.
Finally, Huawei SDP is a mature business solution that has been widely selected and commercial use by more than 120 operators in over 100 countries worldwide, including the world’s five largest mobile operators: Vodafone, Telefonica, America Movil, China Mobile and China Unicom.