Interpretation of H3C's future industrial layout in the 5G era

One of the most important exhibitions of the year in the communications industry, China Telecom Tianyi Smart Ecosystem Expo was held in Guangzhou from September 19 to 22. Mainstream manufacturers made their appearances one after another. New H3C Group, a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup, not only exhibited 5G converged solutions, cloud-based small base stations, MEC edge cloud, ADHaul solutions, and excellent solutions of 5G technology in different fields such as water conservancy, security, government affairs, medical care, education, and industry, but also released solutions for county-level medical communities and participated in China Telecom's smart home cooperation innovation and smart home Wing Alliance partner signing activities.

This year, the hot topic in the industry is undoubtedly 5G. It can be seen that H3C Group is more deeply involved in the deployment and planning of communication networks in the 5G era, and takes advantage of the opportunity of "5G changing society" to give full play to its advantages in the government and enterprise markets. Recently, Han Zhigang, co-president of H3C Group and general manager of the operator business unit, was interviewed by C114 and other media, introducing the Tianyi Exhibition plan, looking forward to the future direction of the industry, and interpreting H3C's industrial layout.

5G layout: Cloud-based small base stations play a role

It is understood that in the face of the new demand for 5G high-frequency signal coverage, small base stations will play a more important role in the deployment of future network architectures. Therefore, various manufacturers in the communications industry chain, including equipment manufacturers, cable manufacturers, antenna manufacturers, and ODM manufacturers, have "targeted" this new potential market for 5G and invested in the research and development of small base stations in order to get a piece of the pie.

H3C Group is undoubtedly the best among them. Recently, H3C's 5G cloud base station participated in the first batch of field tests of China Telecom Group and achieved excellent results in the 3.5G frequency band SA mode test.

H3C Group's 5G cloud-based base station based on the concept of open radio access network (O-RAN) includes products such as BBU, picoRRU, fronthaul expansion unit FSW, and optoelectronic hybrid cable. It can be flexibly deployed with IT cloud architecture. It can not only be combined with industry applications, but also has a white-box design. It can reduce operators' network construction costs through software and hardware decoupling.

"Small base stations will become a major form in the future, and their share will also increase." Han Zhigang pointed out that currently 5G network construction is mainly based on macro base stations, and operators are expected to purchase small base stations after the middle of next year. H3C Group's participation in testing is to participate in the next step of planning. "Previously, 4G network construction was mainly for 2C (consumer) scenarios, and 5G will be for 2B (industry) scenarios, which has great uncertainty. H3C provides new solutions based on existing scenarios, and the advantages of small base stations will be reflected."

In addition to cloud-based small base stations, H3C Group has also penetrated into the 5G bearer and other industry chain links, and entered the bearer network market for IPRAN upgrades to 5G. Han Zhigang introduced that 5G IPRAN is a key link that connects wireless slicing and network element slicing. Relying on years of R&D and design experience in IPRAN live networks, H3C enables 5G IPRAN to support native SDN. At the same time, in the future, it will be based on self-developed chip design to achieve deep security and controllability.

How 5G empowers industries

The industry has a saying that "4G changes life, 5G changes society". Compared with 4G, 5G's characteristics are to enter the vertical industry market and build information infrastructure for the digital transformation of all walks of life in the national economy. Yang Xiaowei, deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, previously stated that by the end of 2018, the scale of my country's digital economy reached 31 trillion yuan, accounting for about 1/3 of GDP. 5G is facing the digital economy, which is the vast sea of ​​stars.

In Han Zhigang's view, the adaptation solutions for 5G specific scenarios are numerous and scattered, which is a challenge that 5G needs to deal with. On the one hand, H3C Group uses more scenario-based needs to promote equipment research and development, including 5G cloud base stations, MEC edge cloud, 5G converged solutions, etc. These technologies are the driving force for creating scenario-based solutions. On the other hand, H3C and operators jointly explore industry application scenarios, such as smart water conservancy.

"The core of our application scenarios in edge cloud is large traffic and low latency. In such scenarios, we hope to conduct in-depth exploration and cooperation with operators in some specific fields. For example, in the fields of security, water conservancy, medical care, education, industry, etc., we have deep ties with operators and jointly explore 5G applications." Han Zhigang said.

It is reported that H3C Group has joined hands with Sichuan Unicom and other industry partners to successfully create a 5G-MEC water conservancy intelligent video cloud product for Sichuan Water Conservancy, allowing the edge cloud platform based on mobile networks to carry water conservancy data insights and analysis, which has effectively promoted the construction and development of smart water conservancy. This is a product that integrates 5G MEC smart water conservancy commercial deployment, which has a good reference significance for promoting the large-scale commercial use of 5G MEC in the water conservancy industry.

"Deep integration with industry applications is the key to 5G's commercial success. The fragmented and discrete nature of the government and enterprise market is a difficult point that operators' 5G strategies need to address. The key to the success of operators' market operation strategies in the government and enterprise industry is the openness, flexibility, efficiency and intelligence of 5G networks," said Han Zhigang.

Practice in the medical industry

At this Tianyi exhibition, H3C Group's county-level medical community joint solution was a highlight. Han Zhigang believes that 2019 is an important year for comprehensive medical reform in counties. The National Health Commission has proposed to build 500 medical communities based on the top 500 county-level hospitals. H3C has always been at the forefront of technology in the construction of medical informatization and has a complete integrated solution. At the same time, combined with the basic resource advantages of operators in various places, the cooperation between the two parties can better serve the county-level medical reform, promote the full launch of telemedicine services, and gradually form a five-level telemedicine service system of "national, provincial, municipal, county, and township".

"China Telecom is promoting the transition from traditional ICT services to providing overall medical cloud services. Medical cloud services are a major trend, but for security and reliability reasons, relatively few hospitals and businesses are on the cloud." Han Zhigang pointed out that it is difficult to migrate all businesses to the cloud. Taking the Shenzhen Children's Hospital, a joint venture between H3C and China Telecom, as an example, the original IT system had more than 100 subsystems.

H3C Group and China Telecom have launched a medical cloud cooperation. During the process of Shenzhen Children's Hospital's business migration to the cloud, facing the complex business system relationships, Shenzhen Telecom and H3C worked together to ensure that Shenzhen Children's Hospital achieved the business relationships remained unchanged during the migration process and data interaction was not affected, thus completing the smooth migration of the hospital's business to the cloud without affecting the hospital's business operations.

By adopting the active-active cloud data center of Shenzhen Telecom Medical Base and Shenzhen Telecom's intelligent operation and maintenance method, Shenzhen Children's Hospital has a better IT operating environment, which ensures the continuity of the core business and zero loss of key business data under the pressure of a sharp increase in business volume, improves the security and protection capabilities of smart medical services, and greatly simplifies operation and maintenance services, greatly reducing the overall cost of the hospital's information construction and operation and maintenance.

"H3C Group and Shenzhen Telecom have jointly reached a landmark case. H3C also hopes to use this as a benchmark to promote enterprise cloud computing to more areas," said Han Zhigang.