The new unit has already advised “quite a few operators from Asian countries”, said Henry Wong, the company’s head of strategic wireless technology and core network, but he refused to name any.
The digital transformation practice centre is designed to offer consultancy from half a day or a full day to chief executives, through to several weeks with specialist staff, said Derry Li, Huawei’s vice president of consulting and systems integration.
Wong and Li were speaking at an Operations Transformation Forum that Huawei is holding in Munich.
“The centre will support the construction of solutions. We will uncover user pain points,” Li told media and analysts at the conference. The process will include prototyping of front-end and back-end solutions, he added.
Hong Kong Telecom and Huawei will extend the scope of the centre shortly to include 5G services, he added.
Speaking at the opening of the same event, Huawei’s board chairman, Liang Hua, said: “The process of digital transformation isn’t easy. In most cases, it takes at least 18 months to get through the toughest period. In 18 months from now, 5G technology will be mature.”
To transform their operations successfully, Liang said operators should pick a scenario, start small, think big, align business and IT, and scale fast.
Liang also highlighted research by MIT, noting that “when you are digitised, you can get higher efficiency, reliability, and cost savings; when you are digital, you can achieve revenue generation and growth.”
Bill Tang, president of Huawei Global Technical Services, said: “This digital platform must have the following characters: align with business process and be integrated in business process, unify data model and exchange data smoothly, cloud native and open capability, intelligent enabled. Based on the platform we can get the best solutions to fulfil the requirements quickly through collaborative innovation with internal and external ecosystem, this is business agility.”
