Powerful digital transformation at Viettel Global Operations Center

At Viettel, the Global Operations Center, Viettel Network Corporation (VTNet) is one of the network leaders. This unit is not only responsible for operating and ensuring Viettel’s network quality and service quality in Vietnam, but also has the entire Viettel telecommunications and information technology infrastructure in 10 foreign markets.

In order to maintain the stability of Viettel’s network in each market, an apparatus of hundreds of people of VTNet takes turns on duty 24/7 to handle any situation from small to large arising from the network system. Viettel from Asia, Africa to America.

Where the lights never go out

VTNet’s Network Operations Room is a place where the lights are almost never turned off. This is an important “link” in Viettel’s centralized network management and operation system – GNOC Global Network Operations System. As the “operator” for the network of more than 110 million customers in 11 countries, the GNOC system monitors and influences inter-provincial and national network systems. As a monitoring satellite, GNOC allows technical experts in Vietnam to also know the status of each BTS station in Peru, Haiti, Tanzania…

During the period of 2020 – 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, Viettel is one of the businesses that have made strong contributions in both resources and technology to support the Government, the health sector and localities nationwide to respond to the pandemic. deal with the pandemic. In that context, the Center’s workload skyrocketed due to a series of large-scale anti-epidemic support technology solutions running on Viettel’s infrastructure such as the tracing system (Bluezone), medical declaration (the newspaper). medical declaration, Unified health declaration system), health information provision/management (University health, Health records), National QR code system, vaccination support system (Booklet). electronic health), a video conferencing system for epidemic prevention and control….

Up to now, the Center has ensured the infrastructure for more than 2,300 video conferencing points, 571 isolation points, and safe control of 6 online meetings run by the Prime Minister to combat the epidemic to the commune level…

Learn programming and change your mind

According to Mr. Le Quang Hieu, Director of the Center, at VTNet from the day it was established to the time Covid-19 occurred, about 40% of the Center’s personnel were in the “on-call” group. This operating model is arranged in the direction of specialization, each employee can cover and monitor all 11 markets at the same time.

For this job, the personnel in charge need to receive processes and tools from other specialized departments and comply with 100%, ensuring no problems. The pure job is to monitor the quality of the network and system during the time of duty, if any problems arise, report them to the superior according to the procedures and regulations.

The passive and repetitive nature of work makes you less likely to develop yourself. The division of 24/7 shifts also affects health and mental health. “To overcome these disadvantages, we asked you to learn programming and change your mindset,” said Mr. Hieu.

The Center actively selects young and potential actors to learn programming. In addition, this team also actively and comprehensively researches the systems, finds the root causes of problems and risks, and offers solutions to improve the sustainability, security and safety of the network.

Optimizing human resources thanks to the “flattening” strategy

Along with the changes at the individual level, the Center’s leaders also set a strategic goal of optimizing personnel with the project of Shifting remote operations.

Before that, the Center had nearly 600 people. The peculiarity of the current apparatus is divided into many layers, divided into 1 core network, 3 areas, 6 processes and a tool ecosystem. The Operations Center is in charge of the core network, each North, Central and South region will have its own NOC (Network Operation Center) forces to be on duty and in charge of the provincial and regional access layer.

In the process of operation, the multi-layer model of management reveals the disadvantage of dispersing management and technical forces. When incidents and problems arise, they must go through many complicated processes and procedures. From this fact, the Center decided to “flatten”, applying a uniform troubleshooting process to make the handling more lean.

Accordingly, the Center has consolidated the entire area and all personnel into the Center. Instead of 3 – 4 operator layers now there is only one layer left. The entire network in Vietnam will only have 1 NOC force in charge of the entire core network and 3 regions instead of 4 forces as before.

Change yourself to reach the world

In 2021, the Global Operations Center will leave many imprints when pioneering in scientific and technological research, positioning the role and image of Viettel’s brand domestically and internationally.

Within Viettel, the Center further promotes the process of digitization, automation, and comprehensive quality improvement of operation and exploitation: replacing manual actions with new technologies developed by Viettel engineers. research and development such as ChatBot, Cloud Monitoring, Auto Escalate, One Click VMSA … and reduce 40% of network incidents, no subjective serious problems.

On a national level, the Center has made a great contribution in technology to the prevention and control of the Covid-19 epidemic through research and implementation of the latest solutions on infrastructure optimization and information security applied to systems. Bluezone, PC-Covid, Electronic health book, Medical declaration…

In the international arena, the fact that the Center’s operators and operators are honored by global organizations has helped Viettel contribute to the world’s open source platform, ranking 44th out of 157 vendor contributions to OpenStack and ranking No. 1 Vietnam as well as Southeast Asia. Viettel also plays a key role in coordinating the Open Source symposium in the Internet Day 2020 event.

The successful lesson of the Center, summarized by Director Le Quang Hieu, is “Dare to think differently, renew yourself, pioneer transformation”.

PV