CeBIT 2015, Hannover, Germany & Shenzhen, China — ZTE Corporation, an international provider of telecoms, enterprise and consumer technology for the mobile internet, has launched an enterprise information-oriented all-in-one product called uSmartPOD at CeBIT 2015 in Hannover. Meanwhile, the company says it is third in the world in patent applications; it claimed first place in 2012.

The uSmartPOD’s design is based on standard cloud architecture and supports a number of enterprise service templates and applications. The company claims that it can help enterprise customers greatly reduce IT deployment costs and difficulties, reports Jeremy Cowan, but has left one analyst confused.

Businesses find that choosing a reliable and appropriate solution for their needs is not always easy or convenient. As the market becomes saturated with products, enterprises need to improve their operational efficiency to ensure that what they purchase can be deployed, integrated and used effectively without impacting day-to-day operations. If they do not address this, says ZTE, maintenance costs will remain high as many enterprises do not have dedicated IT personnel. Meanwhile, many that have in-house IT engineers hope to lower these costs by using products that require little-to-no maintenance.

All-in-one product separates hardware and software

To solve customers’ growing concerns, ZTE (0763.HK / 000063.SZ) has launched the uSmartPOD, said by the China-based vendor to be an “all-in-one product which supports the separation of hardware and software. For hardware, it provides three series of products; Minibox, Expressbox, and Agilebox to meet low cost, high density, high capacity, and high integration requirements.”

For software, it has launched the uSmartPOD OS smart service management system. The uSmartPOD, which is equipped with an automated service deployment engine and background application repository, provides middleware and an automated service deployment reconstruction graphic tool to help partners achieve automated deployment and automated operation and maintenance (O&M) through reconstruction. It supports all-in-one prefabrication in factory, shipping with board, onsite power on-and-play, and one-click installation and deployment of the service system through the App store.

According to data provided by Forrester Consulting, the deployment of this product takes one-fifth of the time of traditional enterprise IT deployment and the product can be put into application just one hour after it begins deployment, saving nearly 70% of deployment costs.

ZTE has selected services provided by partners for enterprise customers according to enterprise characteristics, and selects open source products which have seen proven results with small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Security addressed by SDN

ZTE’s uSmartPOD aims to address enterprise security concerns by using software defined networking (SDN) to isolate enterprise resources. It also supports bring your own device (BYOD) by providing end-to-end (terminal, access, platform, and application) security assurance, so that enterprises can address their information security objectives in confidentiality, integrity, availability, and controlability.

ZTE’s uSmartPOD can increase the value of IT resources and help enterprise customers reduce their IT O&M costs. It reportedly provides middleware support and intelligent O&M such as load balancing, elastic expanding and shrinking, host and back-up, service self-recovery and disaster tolerance. It also supports the Easy Cloud remote O&M tool, multi-expert online diagnosis, and whole-process video recording. The uSmartPOD is available in Android and iOS versions for management via mobile device.

Aapo Markkanen, ABI Research: “Confusing but interesting”

VanillaPlus asked ABI Research‘s principal analyst, Aapo Markkanen about this launch. He commented, “That’s a remarkably confusing product summary – but it does sound potentially interesting. I’d need to see first some info on what’s inside and which sort of IT use cases (and IT pros) they’re going after. The value proposition itself, as articulated (streamlining maintenance ops), is solid.

“That said,” Markkanen added, “to my knowledge ZTE hasn’t been too successful with its cloud and software push. They don’t have much experience serving the enterprise market either. I’m assuming that by ‘partners’ they mean mainly IT service shops and SIs (system integrators), and if there’s a solid set of them on board ZTE might be able to get some traction. But that’d address only the latter issue; whether the cloud element is fit for purpose to begin with is another matter.”

In the current Internet of Everything (IoE) era, says ZTE, the company is trying to help enterprise customers to transform their IT infrastructure and provide products that meet their specific needs. ZTE is also paying close attention to the value-added services beyond enterprise customers’ current requirements, such as big data and mobile payments.

The uSmartPOD is ZTE’s first step in its enterprise M-ICT strategy. In the next three to six years, a ZTE spokesperson says it aims to “explore and develop terminal technology, service cloud, and big data businesses based on the pipeline established by its new M-ICT strategy”.

ZTE’s patent filings top 60,000 as part of its M-ICT strategy

According to the latest World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) report, ZTE ranks among the world’s top three innovators for the fifth straight year, when judged by global patent applications. The company’s applications exceeded 60,000 last year, with more than 17,000 patents now granted to ZTE.

“Technology innovation is central to ZTE’s business, as our patented research is key to empower the growth of the company’s operations globally,” said Guo Xiaoming, chief legal officer at ZTE. “Under ZTE’s new M-ICT strategy, we will continue to harness our intellectual property assets to drive new innovations, delivering superior products and services to our customers around the world.”

ZTE has said it will allocate increased resources on research of 5G technologies and patents in order to shape the future of next-generation networks. At Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona this month, ZTE showcased the company’s capabilities in 5G research, demonstrating the world’s first “pre5G” Massive MIMO commercial base station, achieving data throughput of 400Mbps using a single-carrier frequency and a 128-antenna design.

European Commissioner, Carlos Moedas

As a contributor to the definition of 4G standards, ZTE is also committed to promoting the development of 5G technology and standards. Shi Lirong, ZTE’s president and CEO, this month met Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, paving the way for further collaboration in 5G research. Moedas also invited the company to participate in the Horizon 2020 programme to drive technology development and digitisation in the European Union.

Sources include:  ABI Research, Business Wire, Forrester Consulting, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)