H3C Earns Recognition as China’s Largest SDN Solution Provider for Six Consecutive Years

China-based information and communication technologies (ICT) market research and consulting firm CCW Research recently released the White Paper on the Development Status of the Chinese Software Defined Networking (SDN) Market for 2021-2022. The white paper showed that H3C, a leader in digital solutions, occupied a 32.6 percent share of the Chinese SDN market in 2021, earning the company recognition as the largest SDN solution provider in China for the sixth consecutive year and further consolidating its leadership in the SDN market.

According to CCW Research, with the full convergence of the SDN market and the increasing acceptance of SDN among organizations, the application of the architecture will no longer be the exclusive domain of carriers or large companies, but will rather have a deep impact on all industries through its own evolution. The research organization forecasts the Chinese SDN market to grow to some 7 billion yuan by 2025.

H3C Leads and Accelerates Innovation in the SDN Market in Response to a Trend towards Cloud and AI-Native Architecture

H3C, one of the first digital companies to embark on the R&D and application of SDN, pioneered research on the next-generation network management system in 2003 and rolled out the intelligent network management platform iMC in 2007. In line with new trends sweeping the SDN market, the platform, by being the first to integrate the management of users, services and resources, also became the first B/S (Browser/Server) architecture-based network management offering within the domain of enterprise networking, laying a sound foundation for H3C’s technological evolution and product innovation. In addition, the company defined SDN as AD-NET (Application-Driven Network) in 2015 and, in the subsequent years, has continued upgrading and iterating the AD-NET solution by integrating new technologies and capabilities in a move to meet customer expectations for business development and transformation.

In 2021, in response to the trend towards cloud and AI-native applications, H3C released AD-NET 6.0, a completely reconstructed solution based on a containerization and microservice architecture integrating networking management, control, operation and maintenance and analysis capabilities into different containers and onto a unified digital platform for interoperability and interaction between data. As a result, the new solution can meet user needs for rapid network loading and deployment while lowering the threshold for network construction, use, O&M.

H3C is of the opinion that in addition to resilience, networks should be closely related to upper-layer applications so that they can be deployed along with upper-layer business technologies. In 2022, H3C, adhering to the concepts of cloud and AI-native architecture, launched AD-NET 6.0+. Through nine innovative solutions, including all-optical network (AON), Cloudnet, 5GtoB, smart non-destructive network, deterministic network, computing power network, IPv6+, active safety system, and zero trust software-defined perimeter (SDP), H3C has comprehensively upgraded solutions to the three major application scenarios: Application-Driven Campus (AD-Campus), Application-Driven Date Center (AD-DC), and Application-Driven Wide Area Network (AD-WAN).

The Accelerated Convergence of Computing Power Network Expected to Broaden the Application of SDN

According to H3C, computing power network can integrate multi-level computing power resources, including cloud, edge and endpoint, based on high-speed, mobile, secure and ubiquitous network connections. The distributed computing environment raised the bar in terms of the requirements for intelligent management and resource scheduling capabilities of networks. With a focus on computing power network’s underlying technology, H3C, an active participant and enabler in the development of computing power network, proposed an approach that facilitates unified analysis, control and scheduling of networking and computing power resources via the connection between the distributed “brain” of a computing power network environment, network controllers, a cloud management platform and network devices. By doing so, H3C has developed a computing power network solution that supports separation of transfer and control, helping to create a new computing power network system while enabling global arrangement and unified scheduling of computing power network resources. The solution also provides a solid and powerful network platform for major projects, empowering universal access to both networks and computing power in tandem with ubiquitous intelligence.

H3C, an innovative pioneer in the SDN realm, has always been committed to helping customers achieve digital transformation by providing them with the latest AD-NET solution that ensures enterprise networks’ timely perception of the changes in application needs. As part of its Cloud & AI strategy, H3C plans to further enhance digitalization and intelligence by way continuing innovations in technology, with the aim of empowering industry players by supporting them in embracing the new cloud and AI-native era.