In a post pandemic world, digitalisation is the new normal. It has extended beyond a single organisational setup to production facilities and game-changing services such as unmanned stores, telemedicine, distance learning and flexible manufacturing.
Take for example when affordable home furnishing and decor company, SONGMICS was looking to digitalise its 20,000 square meters warehouse and 900 square meters office space. The company has customers located in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, the United States, Canada and Japan and an established presence on Amazon, and felt the need for an end-to-end, fully wireless solution. This would provide the necessary high-quality coverage and roaming, with high precision Location-Based Services (LBSs), to improve usage of a series of emerging services such as asset management and automated guided vehicles (AGVs).
As offices and production terminals increasingly go wireless, a growing number of latency-sensitive and bandwidth-hungry applications may need to be carried on the same campus network. However, traditional corporate campus networks are neither capable of ensuring bandwidth per user and guaranteeing the quality of key services, nor quickly locating user and application experience faults. It is these pain points that are hindering the digital transformation of campuses.
The challenge campuses face
Here's a very likely scenario in the near future: 25% of enterprises will soon use virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR), with each terminal requiring 130 Mbit/s to 1.5 Gbit/s bandwidth, and integrated 4K telepresence systems will be widely used in intelligent conference rooms. These applications will drive corporate campus networks towards the challenging "gigabit per user" era.
Meanwhile, machine vision quality inspection on the production line will require stable 80+ Mbps bandwidth to ensure lossless image upload and AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) in warehouses will demand zero packet loss during roaming, as a single roaming failure results in downtime of two to three hours. The resulting production network interruptions will lead to huge economic loss for institutions.
Manual O&M will be unable to address fast service changes. Decentralised management will involve many teams and systems, and requires CLI-based onsite O&M by a team of 100+ O&M professionals. Network deployment for a store will take seven days on average, resulting in high O&M costs.
If enterprises are to make a success of their digital transformation journey, they will need to step up their IT infrastructure to support the changing nature of operations where campuses don’t work alone but instead form a network spanning multiple campuses. Smart management will need to move from a distributed, single-file format to a unified cloud platform. The Internet of Things must truly connect anything and everything, including PCs, people, devices and smart objects in general.
The benefits of CloudCampus 2.0
Offering a super capacity network, anytime, anywhere intelligent experience assurance and an autonomous driving network (ADN) -based architecture for simplified deployment and operations and maintenance (O&M), Huawei's latest campus network solution, CloudCampus 2.0 is increasingly helping enterprises build super-efficient campus networks.
CloudCampus 2.0 successfully addresses each one of the pain points campus networks currently face. Huawei iConnect and Wi-Fi 6 Terminals help build a fully-wireless campus network with 50% higher speeds than industry peers. The network facilitates converged access using all IoT protocols so that huge numbers of heterogeneous IoT endpoints can access the network seamlessly and securely. These features enable ubiquitous gigabit speeds, mitigating the issues associated with an increased demand for bandwidth.
As the industry's only user- and application-centric solution, CloudCampus 2.0 provides lossless roaming and intelligent hierarchical quality of service (HQoS), as well as dual-fed and selective receiving features, ensuring zero packet loss for key applications anytime, anywhere – thus helping to avoid costly network interruptions.
CloudCampus 2.0 provides intelligent O&M and fault rectification that can cope with fast service changes. iMaster NCE, another key component of the solution, enables AI-powered intelligent O&M, providing real-time monitoring and intelligent diagnosis based on big data, identifies potential faults, and accurately locates faults. In particular, the network autonomy and self-healing functions greatly free network administrators from complex tasks and improve O&M efficiency by visualising end-to-end user experience and proactively discovering 85% of potential wired and wireless network faults and root causes. Automatic radio calibration improves network-wide performance by 58%.
When it comes to a building in a smart corporate campus – a united network of numerous big and small local area networks (LANs) – it is prudent to turn towards a partner that has the necessary expertise. The corporate campus network of the future is about ubiquitous gigabit, hyper-automation and delivering a deterministic service experience, as well as the potential of monetisation on different levels – ranging from users to operators and partners in between.
The SONGMICS solution
One beneficiary of the CloudCampus 2.0 solution is SONGMICS. Huawei’s AirEngine Wi-Fi 6, an essential component of CloudCampus 2.0, helped SONGMICS enjoy high-quality signal coverage to ensure interruption-free operations. Unmanned material handling is now possible via intelligent AGVs whereas real-time inspection is achievable with HD video streaming. Huawei has provided an intelligent solution for digitising SONGMICS's warehouse, offering wider options for asset management in the future, ultimately increasing supply flow efficiency and supporting business growth. Furthermore, the infrastructure is effectively future-proofed, making further innovations possible while keeping investment costs low. SONGMICS saves over 10% in costs simply by not needing to buy new devices annually.
As the ongoing digital transformation wave helps drive spending on campus networks, Huawei foresees tremendous opportunities for its channel partners with the CloudCampus 2.0 solution. Channel partners, especially those delivering managed services will be able to leverage the core values of the CloudCampus 2.0 solution to help campuses control their operating expenditure while increasing efficiency.
From 24-26 March, Huawei will host the Industrial Digital Transformation Conference 2021 online, exploring the power of the resilient and innovative digital world from three perspectives: business, technology and ecosystems. Featuring a series of activities – from keynote speeches to forums and roundtables – the Industrial Digital Transformation Conference 2021 will be an open and inclusive platform that serves as the backdrop for in-depth, ambitious dialogue.
Learn more about Huawei's campus network solution CloudCampus 2.0
