The Path to Digital Transformation of Virtualization Integration Service

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a trend in the evolution of networks. With NFV, operators can share general hardware resources to reduce investments, and decouple software from hardware to enhance the scalability and responsiveness. But the introduction of NFV also brings about problems such as large-scale network construction, multi-vendor integration, and too many interface specifications. At present, the industry usually uses automated tools to implement NFV integration planning, design, deployment and acceptance testing, which can improve the efficiency and quality of integration and solve the pain points of virtual network integration.

At the same time, digital transformation is becoming the focus of all industries. Operators are taking the construction of 5G network as the starting point to promote the digital transformation of their business. Therefore, the integrators must consider how to introduce digital methods into NFV integration services.

To better understand the digital transformation of the integration services, we need to clarify the concepts of automation, informatization and digitalization and the relation between them, and then discuss the digital transformation ideas and paths of the virtualization integration service.

Informatization, Automation and Digitalization

Informatization is to process the services through information system in the enterprise's production, supply, management, finance and marketing processes, generate new information resources, help personnel at all levels of the enterprise quickly understand dynamic service information for reasonable resources allocation, fix the service processes, reduce difficulties of the front-line work and enhance enterprise management capabilities.

Automation is the process and result of replacing human work and action by technical means. The system operates or controls the machines or devices automatically according to specified procedures or instructions without human intervention to release people from repetitive tasks and dangerous work environments, greatly improving the productivity.

Digitalization is to model the enterprise or product management experience with information system, automatically record and analyze various data of the service process, and provide analysis conclusions and solutions. Digitalization quantifies the entity services, and then converts them into data. Based on the data recorded by a large number of information systems, it performs mathematical modeling for the operational logic of enterprises or products, learns the process data repeatedly and optimizes service models to assist enterprises in decision-making and operation.

The digital transformation of products needs to complete the product digitalization first, and then process the digitized service data based on the information system while introducing the automation technology into the service process, so as to change the business model of the product, realize the digital transformation of the product form and improve the product competitiveness.

Therefore, digital transformation of products can be achieved only by effectively combining informatization, digitalization, and automation.

Digital Transformation Thoughts

After understanding the relevant concepts of digital transformation, there are two issues to consider: whether ZTE virtualization integration services need digital transformation; and how to perform the digital transformation of them.

By combining its integration experience from multiple NFV projects around the world with a deep understanding of the needs of industry customers, ZTE has established an end-to-end, one-stop NFV automated integration service system. The system has achieved the automation of NFV planning and design, network deployment and acceptance testing, effectively solving the pain points of operators in virtual network integration. But compared with product digitalization, the current integration services still have three disadvantages: First, the electronic workflow of the integration services achieves the automation and informatization of the technical actions, but with insufficient automation of the management actions; there is a lack of unified planning on the information collection, storage and management in the integration process; and there are not effective means to accumulate and transfer the skill data and process assets generated in the integration process, making it impossible to further explore the value of the assets.

Digital transformation is urgently needed to solve all these problems of the virtualization integration services. Here are three steps to perform the digital transformation:

• Service datamation

First, perform integration service datamation, and build a digital integration platform to achieve the indexation of the service-related information, and then establish service models so that the integration service data can be used, analyzed and improved for a more refined product management.

• Data-driven services

Based on the digital integration platform, the integration services take data as the trigger point, and data is used to trigger the service actions as well as to find, analyze and solve problems to improve the integration efficiency and quality. In addition, data monetization can be realized through the accumulation of data assets, exploration of data applications, and build-up of digital integration capabilities.

• Service intelligence

After the completion of the above two steps, the virtualization integration service has basically achieved the digital transformation. The next step is to accumulate digital integration assets, introduce intelligent technology to expand the value of digital assets and improve the digital capability of products so that the products will move towards digital intelligence. Intelligence is the final goal of product informationization, digitization and datamation.

Digital Transformation Models and Paths

For the digital transformation of the virtualization integration service, ZTE has defined its model by referring to the industry's digital transformation ideas (Fig 1).

First, clarify the transformation vision and objectives, and determine the implementation path. Second, make a comprehensive plan from five directions, including technical planning, ecological development, security planning, organizational guarantee, application scenarios and transformation value.

ZTE's vision for the digital transformation of the virtualization integration service is to become a leading industry integration solution supplier in terms of technology, model and value by introducing the digital methods into the NFV integration service to achieve the digital transformation of products.

The digital transformation path of ZTE virtualization integration service can be divided into four stages (Fig. 2).

• Informatization stage

Through the information system, record the integration information in the electronic table while standardizing the integration process.

• Automation stage

Through the automatic integration tools, implement automation of the integration services and solidify the integration ability so that the manpower can be replaced by automatic tools, the integration cost decreased, and the integration efficiency and quality improved.

• Digitalization stage

Digital transformation enables the shift from offline to online integration services, from being task-driven to data-driven, and systematic management of the integration process data, so as to accumulate the digital assets, and establish end-to-end, programmable, and automatable digital integration capabilities.

• Digital intelligence stage

AI technology is introduced to realize the intelligent development of the integration service, fully explore the digital assets of the integration services, and build an ubiquitous AI-enabled NFV integration capability system. In this stage, an open, new and win-win integration service ecosystem will be built.

The digital transformation of products is a complex and long-term process. Together with operators, ZTE will continuously improve the methodology of digital integration, explore and expand the application scenarios and scale, and promote the co-construction and sharing of the integration capabilities to achieve the digital and intelligent transformation of the virtualization integration service.