Established in 1988, Huawei Technologies is headquartered in Shenzhen, China. The company is mainly engaged in R&D, manufacturing and marketing of telecommunications equipment, providing customized solutions for fixed, mobile and optical networks as well as data communication. Huawei is now a renowned enterprise in China’s telecommunication market and is quickly evolving into a key participant in the global market. Huawei has 22,000 employees located at 55 branch offices and eight regional headquarters, and maintains sales and service networks worldwide. The company reported 2003 sales revenue of US$3.83 billion.

Already one of the most successful private companies in China, Huawei has a vision of becoming a globally competitive enterprise. To strengthen its business processes, Huawei has deployed many large-scale software systems including product data management, office automation, human resource management, integrated supply chain management, contract management, client information management and technology support. A special management engineering department has been established to ensure the smooth operation of these systems.

The Challenge: Application Deployment across a Complex Global Enterprise

To enable overseas expansion and support its fast-growing business, Huawei had to deploy these enterprise systems in its overseas offices so that headquarters could deliver information in a timely manner and obtain important customer data. The company invested substantially in its global network –- for example, in 2004 Huawei spent US$43 million — but the network faced a variety of problems in different countries, such as inadequate bandwidth due to poor infrastructure and data security concerns, which required the costly dispatch of engineers to remote sites.

“Overseas application deployment posed a big challenge. Our engineers were often traveling far distances to sort out small technical problems, and were overwhelmed in supporting the large number of employees at Huawei,” said Mr. Fu Yilin, Director of the IT Application Development Department at Huawei Technologies (HQ).

The time and considerable expense spent on traveling caused inefficiencies and hampered Huawei’s ability to improve time-to-value for business expansion.

Implementing a Citrix Solution for Application Deployment

Huawei decided to implement Citrix Presentation Server™ software on a group of servers, and deployed various applications on the robust Citrix platform. Now, around 3,000 Huawei employees in 55 global locations can access Lotus Notes R6.5.3, Oracle 11i ERP and other applications from the Citrix Presentation Servers centralized in Huawei headquarters.

Enhanced Remote Access and Cost-effective Centralized Administration

The Citrix solution helps Huawei deliver high-performance application access regardless of the network situation. With Citrix Presentation Server, applications process on the server and only screen updates, mouse clicks and keystrokes are transmitted between client and server. Only minimal bandwidth is required, enabling overseas offices to enjoy consistent application performance via the Internet, using Microsoft® Internet Explorer. Since deployment of the Citrix access infrastructure, Huawei test results have revealed application performance improvements ranging from 80 percent to 300 percent.

With Citrix Presentation Server, the Huawei management engineering department realized the dream of efficient application deployment. Applications and data storage are centralized at the headquarters data center in Shenzhen, allowing all the software updates and data management to be performed on the servers instead of on the user devices. Further, with the session shadowing capability of Citrix Presentation Server, technical support staff can remotely view and assist with problems, instead of having to travel to the user’s location.

Also, because applications no longer execute on the user’s device, support staff can free their hands from sorting out simple IT problems and apply their expertise to more strategic technical initiatives, while company employees benefit from an easier-to-use, more stable application access system.

The implementation of the Citrix solution has enabled Huawei to not only address remote access and daily maintenance problems, but also slash IT costs. With less consumption of network bandwidth, costs were reduced 20 percent. And because Citrix software supports access to the latest applications on existing client devices, including older equipment, Huawei can avoid replacing PCs as frequently –- a potential cost savings of up to US$6 million annually.

However, the most significant benefit of the Citrix solution is streamlining the delivery of real-time information to Huawei’s distributed offices. Real-time access significantly increases its business agility and responsiveness in delivering cutting-edge services and solutions to its customers worldwide.

According to Mr. Fu Yilin, “Our remotely deployed applications are showing a performance improvement of more than 50 percent since the implementation of our Citrix solution. This greatly facilitates the expansion of our overseas business and has improved the satisfaction of our overseas customers.”

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