Huawei Technologies: Heralding A New Communications Era Date:   Friday , January 11, 2008 Huawei Technologies, the Shenzhen-headquartered Telecom Solutions Vendor is one of the most respected telecom companies in the world. Revenues, at $5.89 billion in 2005, have nearly tripled over the past three years. With a sales turnover of U.S. $11 billion in 2006, the company hopes to clock $16 billion in 2007. Huawei provides next generation telecommunication network solutions and serves 31 of the world's top 50 operators including marquee names such as Vodafone, BT, and Telefonica of Europe. The company provides innovative and customised products, services and solutions to create long-term value and potential growth for its customers. Broadly, Huawei provides solutions and equipment in the field of wireless networks, fixed-line networks, optical networks, datacom networks and application and software solutions. Worldwide it has over 65,000 employees, of whom 48 percent are dedicated to R&D. In India, Huawei has a large R&D centre in Bangalore, which is being expanded now. It is also a major supplier of equipment and solutions to a large number of private telecom players in the country. On his visit to Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, in 2005, the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said, “The potential for economic growth through IT could best be exploited by India and China if they marry their respective strengths – India’s in software and China’s in hardware. If India and China cooperate, it will signify the dawn of the Asian century in IT… that day will come.” Long before this statement was made by the Chinese PM, there was one company which realized this potential – Huawei Technologies that envisioned the heralding of an Asian Century in IT. Huawei is China’s largest telecommunications network technology provider and it is one of the first Chinese technology companies to have a software development center in India. Today, of the $11 billion revenues of Huawei, 50 percent comes from the Asia Pacific operations and India’s share of the revenue pie is Significant. Moreover, the company’s growth in India has been closely aligned to the rapid and successful development of the communications industry. Today 1300 engineers in the Huawei R & D center in India significantly contributes to the entire gamut of telecom solutions in Fixed Networks, Mobile Networks, Data Communications, Optical Networks, and Terminals by providing cutting-edge technologies in areas like Intelligent Network, Next Generation Network, Datacom, Telecom Middleware, Network Management, Mobile Handset, Server and Security management application, and Optical Network. With more than 200 patents filed from the India center, the Huawei India centre is emerging as a vital research and development center for the next generation intelligent network technology. As mobile operators across the world are leaping ahead adding millions of mobile customers every quarter, there is constant pressure on telecom operators to ramp up their backend infrastructure which mainly consists of networks. What brings alive these networks is the software component and that is also its major differentiator in the market. According to industry experts, telecom operators have seen their margins dramatically shrink as the business models have changed from a regulated market to a relatively free market. The challenge, therefore, is in building a strategic framework that fosters sustained growth. Hence, the key to success is more volumes and add-on subscribers, and delivery of various services hinges on a stable IT backbone that has to be agile and flexible to meet the growing demands. Huawei understands these complexities and the changing scenario in the telecom industry. Serving customers is the sole motto of the company and high quality, excellent service, low operating costs are top priority here. The statement which the company uses to make its employees inculcate customer oriented approach and to enhance their competitiveness and profitability is that the customer is the reason Huawei exists; customer demand is the fundamental driving force of all its activities. Hence, the company is on a continuous journey to enhance its capabilities through its India R & D center which comprises of five business units namely telecom services, the embedded software division, telecom server software division and two testing units. Broadly, the center is involved in the development of intelligent networks, mobile handset applications, embedded software and telecom server software services. The company has invested more than $100 million so far in Bangalore and has also obtained CMMi Level5 development capacity certification. The testing edge Being a product development company that entered the telecom industry with a great focus on quality, Huawei gives a huge thrust to testing. It is also positioned as a verification and validation business – an entirely separate vertical that works along with the telecom services, embedded services, and telecom server. This edge in reaching perfection has helped the company deploy products in over 100 countries including India, U.K., other European countries, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Egypt, UAE, Canada, and the U.S., for over 300 operators. Around 300 engineers work dedicatedly in scrutinizing the end product for any software errors and bugs and thus they become the end customers internally. The test manager is involved in the product from the beginning till the product is rolled out to the customer. In some cases the testing process is prolonged even after the product is rolled out. “Test analysis and design form the integral plan of the product road map,” says Srikanth Renganathan, Business Unit Head - Telecom Test Business Unit 2. “Various customer scenarios are reproduced in the testing labs to ensure an error-free product,” explains Renganathan. Around 100 engineers are engaged in research on various testing aspects of the Wireless Intelligent networks, Fixed intelligent networks, and the Voice over Internet protocol in the labs set up for testing purposes. Renganathan recalls a trouble shoot that came out during Mother’s day in Peru. It is a very special day in Peru and a very high traffic is expected on that day (of around 300 CAPS, with 50 percent of the customer’s subscriber base being migrated onto our system in a phase-wise manner) As it was the first day of very high traffic for the Huawei network, after it went commercial, making this special day successful from the service perspective was a big responsibility for Renganathan and his team. To ensure this, the engineers stayed in the customer’s commercial equipment room for more than 36 hours continuously, monitoring the system and ensuring its stability. Finally the team managed to tide the challenge successfully.The achievement of this milestone further boosted the confidence of its customers. Being a product development company, apart from indulging in telecom development and testing, Huawei India specialises in development of technical documents such as Developer Guides, User Manuals, Online Helps, Configuration and Installation Manuals based on the customer's needs. Engaging over 80 information engineers, the Information Development Group significantly contributes to the information solutions of the entire gamut of telecom solutions in Fixed Networks, Mobile Networks, Data Communications, Optical Networks, and Terminals for the India R&D center, and has demonstrated a strong commitment to understand today's telecom platform and product business based on the customer's needs. The information development team has implemented new Information Systems, gained expertise in scenario-based writing, DITA, Information Mapping, special documentation such as TCL Help, Man pages, and Sample usable code amongst others. Huawei India R&D Centre has built a facility for defining the standards and another contact center for Language and Information Development and works extensively on usability and documentation automation using Doxygen and other tools. Embedded solutions: Opening new vistas Huawei India’s embedded solution offerings include a comprehensive set of design and development services for platform and component part in the telecom and datacom space. “Unlike the services industry, the team is given complete ownership of the product with a challenge to make it world class. Work is done in the area of routing platform components, OS middle ware, next generation protocol space, IP domain, and optics,” explains Virendra Gupta, Associate VP - Head Embedded Software. In the OS middle ware, the company is working on bringing uniform behavior across various hardware and OS platforms. As new hardware and different operating systems are flooding the market and the equipment manufacturers move towards new and high-end operating systems and hardware, the middle ware team in India works towards building a unique platform with a flexible architecture. Moreover, in the components space the competition is very stiff with too many players in each component, like database and protocol stacks amongst others. Therefore, the architecture should be portable and should be able to deliver high performance. For example, Huawei has a in memory database component which is enhanced from time to time and released to various customers to integrate it in solutions such as IP Multimedia System. As of now, four versions of the database have been rolled out into the market. While doing so, the engineers have ensured that the new versions do not affect the existing customers and the architecture will have the flexibility to adapt to new features added to it. Another important area in which work happens out of Embedded Development unit is the development of core protocol components for use in Next Generation Networks and IP Multimedia Services Networks. The main challenge here is to develop flexible solutions which can be deployed across different type of network nodes and can work on both embedded and network platfoms; deliver industry-leading performance and use minimum footprint in memory. Right now the telecom space is fast evolving. However the killer application still remains the basic voice call and most revenue for the carrier is generated through this service only. However with the continuing penetration and deployment of broadband access technologies like ADSL, Cable, WiMAX and HSDPA access to bandwidth limitations are fast disappearing. Internet companies like Skype, Google and Yahoo have started offering basic voice services at extremely low cost (or even free) and with acceptable quality. This poses a serious threat to the revenue stream of telecom service providers. To counter this, telecom service providers and equipment vendors are developing the IMS network architecture which facilitates Fixed-Mobile Conver-gence, guarantees Quality-of-Service and opens the network to innovation in the services space. With this architecture, new services and innovative service bundles can be deployed which will revolutionize how we communicate with each other. It opens the possibility of new revenue streams for telecom companies by providing TriplePlay and QuadPlay features to the end-users with the same network. Employees in core protocol component team consistently research these developments, make technology adoption roadmaps and develop protocol infrastructure, which will ultimately be used to provide these new services in the network. “The engineers of Huawei constantly do pre-research and analysis of various innovations happening in the industry for the components or platforms or products owned by the center and based on that they define the roadmap to keep the solution offering competitive. We work closely with the product line divisions to meet the customer requirements with complete ownership of their implementation,” says Gupta. The entire IPv6 stack for the whole product line of Huawei was developed out of India. It is predicted that in the next few years the IP address would get exhausted as more and more devices are getting Internet enabled, and the industry will have to depend on IPv6. Viewed in this context, the contribution from the India center towards the next generation protocol stack becomes quite significant. The team is also working on the Next Generation Routing Platform with key features of high reliability, availability, scalability, extensibility, capacity and support for multiple virtual routers. They have also developed IP Security solution for wireless and access network customers. Routing protocol developed by the team is widely deployed by customers worldwide. Performance and size are two critical success factors for work in Optics Transport Network domain. Network Time Protocol and Memory Management Components developed in India strictly meet these requirements and have been rolled out for deployment. The team is also working on OS middleware platform, Data Protocols and Network Planning Software Development for optical market. Staying ahead in Telecom services and Server applications Huawei sees a great traction in the telecom services area too where the major focus is on intelligent networks and mobile handset applications. Within the intelligent network, a lot of work is done in the areas which include wireless intelligent networks, fixed intelligent networks, and peripherals. “In recent times we developed an integrated platform for supporting the wireless and fixed intelligent networks. On the mobile handset application side Huawei specializes in the messaging services, platform components, and in developing a standard platform which can work across various handsets,” says Anil Kumar Pandey, Associate Vice President – R&D, Head - Telecom Intelligence Services. Color ring back tone plays the ring tone fixed by the called party, and plays the ring back tone customized by the called party to the calling party. In the fixed network application, it can be networked with the gateway exchange or end exchange of the fixed network, PHS, and NGN; in the mobile application, it supports 2G GSM and 3G networking application. “In India customers like Reliance, Tata, and MTNL are using this service launched by Huawei. In this area the Indian team developed a new feature which lets the caller record the CRBT if he chooses so, by pressing the star button,” explains Pandey. The messaging services application works on multiple network standards. Its basic services include point-to-point SMS, point-to-ESME (External Short Messaging Entity) messages, ESME-to-point messages, and other value-added services such as group messages, SMS query, SMS lottery, and SMS chat. Beyond the embedded solutions and telecom services development, there is yet another business unit of Server and Network management solution which contributes significantly to the product line of the parent company with its platforms’ large scale usage and deployment. In the area of network management this division builds up Generic Platforms and Subsystems which cater to the configuration, security, provisioning, and performance management of all types of Network Elements (NE) in Huawei’s integrated product portfolio. These Generic Platforms based on SOA, enable product development teams to rapidly develop Unified, Customized and Flexible Next Generation Network Management solutions. These generic platforms have requisite Services and Interfaces to manage wireless, fixed, optical, next generation and datacomm products NEs. In Server management side, Huawei India has entirely developed and owns the Carrier grade Application server and Report servers. These servers are developed mainly in java, j2ee, and other web technologies. These contribute significantly to the Capability of Huawei Solutions to rapidly develop and customize value added Telecom Services. With Customer and Value Added services independent of the underlying bearer & transport network being key for the modern day subscriber, these Server Platforms constitute key contribution of Huawei India to Parent Company. This division also looks into the Network Security aspect of the Huawei solutions. When we deploy our solution to our key customers like Vodafone and British Telecom, they want our solutions to be secure over the network. Hence, we build applications and components which make all our Solutions Network Secure,” says Veer Kamesh, Associate Vice President & Head - Telecom Server Business Unit. This is the era of FMC – Fixed Mobile Convergence. Hence all the management platforms should be capable of handling multiple and diverse network elements. Moreover, today the service providers buy equipments from different vendors. Hence, the challenge is to build a robust and flexible platform which interfaces and interoperates with different Network Devices of various vendors as part of large global telecom networks. Besides developing competent and robust platforms for network management solutions, the engineers at Huawei are also constantly updating the platform to make it compatible with new devices and equipments and compliant to various standards. Beyond Coding–Culture and Values @ Huawei A company with such a proven track record of building cutting edge technology applications and is hailed by the customers for its unique professional approach could not have sustained the growth pace without being equally focused on its employees. Hence all initiatives on human resource are planned with this idea in the background. All the people related initiatives are decided in a democratic manner involving the departmental/ Division and Business Unit Heads are decided in the HR committee which consists of members of all five business units and policy decisions are made after consulting the committee says Pius Maria Prasad, Human Resource Director. Whether it is the recruitment process, work environment, career progression, welfare programs, training or mentorship, the goal is to ignite the potential in the employees and promote the concept of achieving together. Hence when Huawei started its India operations in 1999, they sent engineers from India to Huawei headquarters in Schenzen in China to understand and learn the core activities of the company. This helped in a long way to align the work done in India with that of in Schenzen. The concept of achieving together is well defined in the dual career development path Huawei offers to its employees. This initiative comprises of a managerial path and a technical path, and allows employees to choose an appropriate career path of their choice for their personal development based on their skills and career interests. In order to help them choose their career path, the company allows them to take up variety of roles. For example, a software engineer can take up assignments in testing or activities. In addition, the Huawei offers a variety of training to help employees upgrade themselves. The recruitment process however is quite stringent where candidate have to go through series of tests and interview before they can qualify to the selection. “We make the recruitment process stringent as to ensure quality in terms of resources”, explains Pius. Walk around the plush office of Huawei in the Leela Palace and Diamond District buildings on Airport Road in Bangalore, you will notice eager looking Chinese faces with a pleasant smile working in camaraderie with their Indian counterparts. Apart from work they share a lot of other activities which brings in synergy and alignment with each other and make work more pleasurable. For its Chinese employees, the India centre even has a Chinese eaterie managed by a Chinese chef to savour Chinese delicacies. Along with Diwali, Chinese festivals like the spring festival which marks the beginning of the New Year is celebrated every year in the Bangalore R & D centre. Chinese lanterns are lighted and the whole place is decked up to bring in the Spring festival atmosphere. Like Zhu Haifeng alias Nicolas who hummed a hit Bollywood number to us. Enjoying life does not end with celebrations during festival times. In Huawei monthly sports and games activities are organised to enjoy and to foster team building and bonding. The company believes that the employees should enjoy life outside office. Hence every Friday, the public relations divison sends a detailed schedule of events and programmes happening in and around the city and also suggests picnic spots and destinations to visit during the weekend. This helps them plan their weekend ahead and also enjoy it to the fullest with family. Pioneering many new developments and advancements in the communications space, Huawei is not only fulfilling its vision to enrich life through communication, but also heralding a new communications era. With technological innovations, unique customer centric work approach and a dedicated talent pool Huawei is on its way to conquer the Everest in the industry, standing tall like the huge tower it is building on top of the Mount Everest which provides coverage for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay Team that plans to reach the summit in time for the Olympic Games. At the helm of affairs “Back in China, over the weekend I used to drive out of the city. I once drove from Shenzhen city to Sichuan, a province in southwest China covering more than 1000 miles. The drive was enjoyable and could be done in two days. It's like driving from Bangalore to Delhi,” quips George Huang (38), who is the Chief Operating Officer of Huawei Technologies India (HTIPL). While Huang cannot think of driving to Delhi in two days, he does enjoy the pleasant climate that Bangalore has to offer. In Bangalore, Huang is responsible for enhancing HTIPL's product delivery capabilities and promoting end to end ownership of products, expanding HTIPL's operations, directing new platforms and products development and setting up Huawei's own R&D Campus. When Huang graduated in Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, he hadn't heard about Huawei. The company was just two years old and not made its mark yet. Huang joined a state owned company. By the mid 90s Huawei became preferred company for most youngsters in China. Over a period of time the company evolved as a center for innovation. Huang too got excited and joined Huawei in 1996. He had seen a small company grow to great heights in such a short period of time. If you have the expertise or capability, Huawei offers an accelerated career path. Huang is a case in point. He joined Huawei as a software engineer. In less than a decade, he grew up the ranks and participated in high technology research. Prior to moving to India, Huang held the position of Chief Operating Officer of Huawei's Nanjing Research Institute, another important R&D center of Huawei in Nanjing City, China. Over there he was responsible for the development of core components in Intelligent Network, Datacom and Optical product lines, and was instrumental in deployment of series of products world wide. In India, the focus is on software, which requires matured processes. This is where the center's SEI CMM Level 5 capability plays a key role. For total product development Huawei has its own development methodology refined over the years. The challenge for Huang and his leadership team is to combine this matured methodology with stringent software processes.