1 December 2016, Shenzhen, China – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today announced that its Cloud Works solution has won the Innovation of the Year award from Telecom Asia, one of Asia’s most authoritative telecommunications publications, spotlighting its leading position in the network functions virtualization (NFV) field.

Based on a NFV network of components, ZTE's Cloud Works solution is built on an open platform, consolidating product development, verification, integration and release. Third-party developers can use atomic components from the carrier's micro-service component library in a user-friendly development environment to create innovative applications satisfying individualized user requirements. The developers can also test and verify their applications in a simulation environment and release their applications on the platform. The Cloud Works solution also enables extended services to be offered by apps running over mobile networks in addition to standard services offered by the carrier. This will satisfy diversified 5G and IoT application requirements which developers and carriers will be able to benefit from.

This NFV Innovation of the Year award, together with the Best Core Network Product award won by ZTE at the 5G World Summit 2016 for its cloud-based core network solution vCN, demonstrate ZTE's strength in innovation and leading position in telecommunication cloud solutions, cloud-based core networks and NFV. OVUM, the global telecommunication consulting firm, praised ZTE's cloud solutions in a white paper issued on May 2016, which said: "ZTE is a leading player in all areas of NFV development."

To promote the openness and standardisation of telecommunication cloud solutions and cloud-based core networks, ZTE has joined more than 70 organisations for standardisation, including 3GPP, ETSI, OPNFV and OpenStack, and works extensively and intensively with major manufacturers in the industry. ZTE also works with major carriers to assist with their service transformation, including VimpelCom Russia, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and Telekom Austria. To date, ZTE's telecommunication cloud products have been used in more than 100 commercial and proof of concept (PoC) sites.