ZTE CTO Wang Xiyu: Penglu soars to build the foundation of the digital economy

On February 26, Wang Xiyu, executive vice president and chief technology officer of ZTE, published a signed article entitled "Penglu Soars, Building the Foundation of digital economy".

Wang Xiyu, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of ZTE

The platform of the ninth floor starts from the soil. On the road to the intelligent connection of everything, efficient digital infrastructure and tradable digital capabilities are becoming the core source of power in the digital economy. Specifically, building an efficient digital infrastructure requires "from building a good network to using a good network" and "from connecting to computing power"; to build a tradable digital capability, it is necessary to "from consumption to industry" and "from tools to transactions".

And real creatures, the same is not continued. In the current complex internal and external environment, in order to achieve sustainable and high-quality development of the digital economy, it should form an innovative ecosystem with diversity, systematization and openness. ZTE's original intention is like a rock, adhering to the positioning of "digital economy road builder", adhering to the concept of "openness and win-win", and is willing to coexist and wisdom with partners.

The full text is as follows:

"Soaring on the Peng Road, Building the Foundation of the Digital Economy"

Thanks to the development of a new generation of information technology, the scale of the global digital economy continues to rise. In 2020, the added value of the digital economy in 47 major countries around the world, such as China, the United States and Germany, reached 32.6 trillion US dollars, accounting for 43.7% of GDP. In the process, countries have taken different paths to promote development. For example, the European Union has created a digital economy ecology driven by the leading exploration of digital governance rules and the construction of a digital single market, and the United Kingdom has led digital transformation with the digital government as the leader. China, on the other hand, is based on the industrial base and gives full play to market vitality, and leads the high-quality social and economic development by moderately advanced infrastructure construction and accelerating the integration of virtual and real economies.

The platform of the ninth floor starts from the soil. On the road to the intelligent connection of everything, efficient digital infrastructure and tradable digital capabilities are becoming the core source of power in the digital economy.

Infrastructure "From Building a Good Network to Using a Good Network"

The "double gigabit" network represented by 5G and gigabit optical networks has begun to take shape, laying a solid foundation for new infrastructure. As the network enters the development period from the construction period, it is expected to focus more on the following two aspects: how to improve the network construction more accurately and economically, that is, to build a "good" network; how to expand the application of different scenarios more efficiently and on a large scale, that is, "use" a good network.

First, the evaluation focus of the "good" network will transition from technical indicators to customer perception. In the field of ToC and ToH, compared with the 4G era, the market differences are mainly reflected in: the changes in work and lifestyle brought about by the epidemic, the outbreak of applications such as short video and live broadcasting, the rapid sinking of the mobile Internet market, and the expectation of differentiated applications such as XR and meta-universe. Therefore, if you want to maintain a good user perception, you need 5G to adapt to the depth and breadth coverage. In the field of ToB, the in-depth expansion and integration from ICT to OT (production domain) also puts forward higher expectations for network performance, economic convenience, security and reliability.

Secondly, in the implementation path, it is necessary to balance the performance combination, construction and maintenance costs, deployment convenience and other factors in different scenarios, and the refined series of solutions will become a better choice. For example, miniaturized equipment such as pole stations can be used to achieve rapid deployment of 5G with zero footprint; MM SSB1+X/AAPC self-optimizing software to increase 5G high-level coverage by 20-30%; software optimization to achieve joint deployment of digital room division and traditional DAS, which greatly reduces the cost of indoor coverage deployment; low-frequency FDD such as 700M/900M to achieve 5G low-cost wide-area coverage; Wi-Fi 6 to achieve "true gigabit" service experience to support the all-round needs of new smart homes; and 5G+ POL networks, as well as the introduction of 5G TSN and 5G LAN, better protect the differentiated requirements of enterprise applications.

While building a "good" network, we must also "use" a good network, and terminals and applications are the key to "using" a good network. At present, 5G already has a thousand yuan machine, low-cost terminals will undoubtedly accelerate the improvement of 5G penetration; the rich content of video applications such as high-definition and live events is easier to play the differentiated advantages of the dual gigabit network; relying on the software and hardware architecture of cloud network integration, end-to-end one-stop management services and industrial Internet platforms, application innovation in the ToB field is emerging in an endless stream, and it is moving towards "commercial delivery and large-scale replication". Here I would like to emphasize in particular, looking back at history, PC's "wintel" platform ecology has promoted the vigorous development of the Internet, the iOS platform and Android platform have spawned the mobile Internet era, in the context of unlimited network bandwidth and computing power, it can be expected that cloud computers will coexist with PCs, MR will become a new ecology of mobile terminals, of which meta-universe digital twins, cloud games, etc. As the representative applications are increasingly entering the field of personal consumption, and will further promote the explosive growth of 5G services.

Infrastructure "from connection to computing power"

According to IDC, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of global data volume has been close to 50% over the past decade, and the increase is expected to be even steeper as the era of intelligent connection of everything begins. At the same time, Moore's Law and Nielsen's Law still work, but they show that the growth rate of network bandwidth has greatly exceeded the growth rate of CPU performance. Under the impact of data torrents at the opposite end, edge, and cloud, distributed and heterogeneous computing came into being, and network and computing power complement each other, reflecting a closer relationship and more blurred boundaries, so as to achieve the optimal global benefits of storing, exchanging and processing massive data. More importantly, carbon neutrality has become a common value and goal of the world and all mankind, and China has successively issued policy guidelines such as "new infrastructure", "double carbon" and "east and west calculations" to accelerate the green and low-carbon process.

The general trend of digitalization and low-carbonization is accelerating the drive of computing networks to enter a new stage of complementarity, and the foundation of "from connecting to computing power" is a new basic facility and service system of integration, and the computing power network has emerged. The industry has joined hands in innovation and formed a joint technical direction in terms of slicing, TSN, cloud-network integration, network intelligence autonomous evolution, computing network, etc., in order to achieve the goal of "network omnipresence, computing power is omnipresent, and intelligence is omnipresent".

There is a consensus on the vision, and more importantly, how to break through the core bottleneck on the path and gnaw down the hard bones. To create an efficient "digital base" with high-speed ubiquitous, heaven-earth integration, cloud-network integration, intelligent agility, green and low-carbon, safe and controllable, it requires a single in-depth breakthrough and three-dimensional collaborative integration, requires soft, hard, and core collaboration, and requires ABCDNET (wisdom, chain, cloud, digital, network, edge, and end) penetration. In terms of chips, with domain customization (DSA), packaging and architecture innovation, the Moore dividend continues, and the hardware acceleration based on FPGA, DPU and other technologies that have been maturely applied has greatly improved the cost performance and edge efficiency. In terms of networks, while continuously pursuing higher spectral and spectral efficiency, we will accelerate the advancement of SRV6's SD-WAN and realize the efficient cross-domain collaborative orchestration of network resources. In terms of cloud, the new modular data center effectively reduces the PUE of the data center to meet the requirements of low-carbon and energy-saving construction; integrates and efficient cloud platforms to adapt to heterogeneous resources, supports flexible resource allocation and auto scaling, effectively supports the edge lightweight deployment and low-cost innovation trial and error; and explores the fields of computing power, computing power perception, computing power routing, and hash rate orchestration. In terms of intelligence, in addition to the practice of network performance optimization and autonomous evolution, the future will build a high-level orchestration brain of "computing network energy", adopt unified atomic power API control, shield the differences between multi-manufacturer network equipment and multi-cloud environment, and realize the integration service of "connection + computing + digital intelligence" for ordinary users and vertical industry users.

Digital Capabilities "From Consumption to Industry"

With the promotion of the construction of new digital infrastructure such as pan-5G, digital application innovation has also been comprehensively deepened from personal consumption to industrial transformation and social governance. Different from the relatively similar needs of consumers, the core demand of industrial digital transformation is to reduce costs and improve efficiency and survive and develop, due to the difference in industry scenarios and enterprise development stages, the digital application of the industry is obviously fragmented. At the same time, because industrial digitalization is still in the expansion period, it must go through the process of innovation trial and error, business model exploration and ecological incubation, and customers generally hope that digital resources and capabilities can be deployed on demand, flexibly expanded, safe and reliable, and economically convenient. Therefore, in the field of industrial digitalization, digital capabilities need to focus on components and services, focus on scenarios and key businesses, start at low cost, iterate quickly, and continue to innovate.

The fourth "Bloom Cup" held in 2021 attracted nearly 7,000 enterprises to apply for 12,281 industry application projects, and projects with commercial value and scale promotion potential continued to emerge. In Yunnan Shenhuo Aluminum, the platform access to the perception data source has exceeded 10,000, the production, control, management system to achieve preliminary digital penetration, has deployed the conveyor belt crack online detection, electrolyzer leakage real-time monitoring, crane remote real-time control and other digital applications, anode assembly pass rate increased by 15%, maintenance belt idling reduced by 80%, crane bicycle operation efficiency increased by 60%, can save more than 90 million kWh of electricity per year. In Shanneng Group, combined with the deployment of lightweight downhole 5G intrinsically safe base stations, site-level hashrate engine NodeEngine, 5G gateways, etc., the video transmission delay of the downhole working surface has been reduced by more than 50%, and the real-time remote control of comprehensive mining equipment such as excavators and excavators has been realized, reducing the number of underground workers by 50%, and greatly improving production safety. In the Sinopec Geophysical Exploration Institute, by using the miniaturized core network i5GC, long-range 5G base station and other vehicle-mounted integration solutions, the flexible and rapid network distribution in the field is realized, which helps the reconstruction of exploration business processes, improves the efficiency of pilot exploration comprehensive operations by about 500%, shortens the exploration period by more than half, and saves more than 50% of labor costs. In Tianjin Port, pan-5G digital applications such as intelligent tally, remote real-time control of quay bridges, and driverless electric collection cards not only bring about a 20-30% increase in efficiency, but also help prevent and control the epidemic. In nanjing Binjiang "5G manufacturing 5G" production base, more than 60 5G applications in 16 types of scenarios have realized production line flexibility, warehousing and logistics automation, and multi-scenario control remote, saving 28% in labor costs, increasing turnover efficiency by 15%, and increasing production efficiency by 40%. There are also many innovative applications such as Guangzhou high-speed rail, commercial complexes, and medical care, which reduce costs and improve efficiency for enterprises while realizing the people's livelihood with science and technology. In summary, the scene of large industrial parks represented by metallurgy, steel and mines has become the first mature and large-scale field in the digital transformation of vertical industries.

ZTE has also set up a special team for metallurgical steel projects and mine projects to further accelerate the integration of scenario-oriented capabilities and organizational response. With the continuous improvement of 5G deterministic network capabilities and the deep integration of 5G and video, 5G application scenarios in ports, electronic manufacturing, new media and other industries will gradually mature into the stage of scale replication.

Digital Capabilities "From Tools to Trading"

In addition to the deepening and expansion of OT (production domain), the digital transformation and upgrading of enterprises themselves is also an important issue, which requires the construction of data penetration, visual and controllable processes, efficient collaboration and ubiquitous intelligent applications inside and outside, and create agile, flexible and resilient enterprises. From the perspective of instrumentation and automation of the operation process, in essence, it is rather than the root cause. The essence of enterprise is transaction, and the essence of enterprise digital transformation is to use digital means to build the lowest cost and best experience transaction structure, shorten the distance between users and suppliers, improve transaction efficiency, and thus create economic benefits and social benefits.

Take ZTE's own practice, which won the Ram Charan Management Practice Award, as an example. Since the launch of the digital transformation in 2016, starting from the enterprise transaction architecture, the infrastructure has been the first, and through the efficient digital base, the unified entrance and team twin collaboration have been realized; the important things have been prioritized, and the "local tools" for the ultimate experience have been created from the perspective of the operators; the scene-driven transformation and data governance of the company's systems, especially the scenes of the front-line employees closest to the customer; the low-cost consumption demands of business data in various fields have been comprehensively considered, and a universal data thinking has been established within the enterprise to "the first-line scenario closest to the customer." "Drive end-to-end "global data" governance. At present, all employees through iCenter online communication and automated office, remote office efficiency of 95%, through DevOps R & D cloud, 30,000+ R & D personnel across the real-time online collaboration. Through the digital transformation of "from tools to transactions", enterprises can realize digital connection points into lines and connecting surfaces, which can not only bring changes in efficiency and efficiency for enterprises, but also enhance the expansion potential of transaction boundaries, capability boundaries and value circle boundaries of enterprises.

And real creatures, the same is not continued

"From building a good network to using a good network", "from connecting to computing power", "from consumption to industry", "from tools to trading", and real life, the same is not continued. In the current complex internal and external environment, if the digital economy is to achieve sustainable and high-quality development, and truly have leading competitiveness and productivity from a global perspective, it should form a diversified, systematic and open industrial innovation ecology, in which digital operators, large enterprises in various industries, equipment manufacturers, and small and medium-sized enterprises play their own unique advantages, based on their respective positioning in the industrial chain, coordinated development, vigorous growth, and the formation of ecological win-win.

In the rolling tide, do not let the floating clouds cover their eyes, ZTE adheres to the positioning of "digital economy road builder", adheres to the concept of "openness and win-win", on the one hand, positioned as an infrastructure equipment and technology provider, driven by user scenarios and experiences, provides the world's leading cloud, network, edge and terminal equipment, and actively opens its core atomic capabilities to help digital operators and large enterprises; on the other hand, it drives small and medium-sized enterprises such as "hidden champions" with its own capabilities, and adheres to symbiosis, win-win and common wisdom with ecological partners. With continuous technological breakthrough innovation and reliable supply chain prosperity ecology. In the field of underlying source power technology, ZTE faces the diversified needs of computing power and networks, and for different business combination scenarios, continuously deepens the soft and hard collaborative optimization of chips, algorithms and architectures with field customization (DSA), packaging and architecture innovation; in the field of industrial empowerment, ZTE provides cloud network basic capabilities and building block components to contribute to the benchmarking experience of the 5G industry; in terms of its own practice, ZTE has firmly transformed in the fields of digital research and development, digital office and digital production. Integrate digitalization into the blood of the enterprise and share it with the industry.

ZTE's original intention is like a rock, and it is willing to coexist and symbiotic with its partners and work together to go far.

(Editor-in-Charge: Linghua Kang)