7/12/2005 -- Cisco Systems Inc. has tangled with Chinese super manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. in the past -- most notably, of course, when Cisco was vindicated in its long-simmering intellectual property (IP) case between the two.

Last month, Huawei announced the global release of its Quidway ME60 MSCG, a 10-Gigabit multi-service control product that provides support for rich services, including terminal access authentication, service identification and classification, safety protection, session agent, hierarchical QoS scheduling, service distinguishment, and VPN services.

It’s an important release for Huawei, which hopes to compete more effectively with Cisco, Alcatel, Juniper Networks and other established players in the carrier space. Some analysts say the ME60 should let Huawei do just that. “[T]he platform appears to demonstrate the company’s ability to develop innovative, high-value products for established carriers. Huawei has taken a new product category, the IP service platform, and added a considerable amount of additional functionality in the areas of quality of service ... and security,” says John Marcus, a senior analyst for telecom infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis Inc.

At the same time, says Marcus, the ME60 is also designed to handle edge routing, BRAS, session border control, firewall and deep packet inspection functions for carrier IP networks. In at least one respect, he notes, it appears custom-tailored to address the needs of carrier-grade customers outside of Huawei’s bread-and-butter customer base in the Pacific Rim. “The company says it is responding to feedback from European carriers, and it can be assumed that its engagement with the BT 21CN bidding process, in which it won business in the access and transport domains but not high-value metro domain, has influenced the platform’s development,” he notes.

There’s good reason for this, says Marcus. This year, Huawei expects to triple its EU revenues (the company projects revenues in the neighborhood of $600 million U.S.) and says the EU will be its most strategic market going forward. “With the ME60 MSCG, Huawei can now target European carriers with an IP service platform for deployment at the edge of the service provider network,” he continues. “Although it has started to market its NE40 and NE80 routers outside of its home territory, previously, the company’s existing BRAS platforms were deployed only by carriers in China, where some operators have preferred to have the BRAS function on a separate device.”

The ME60, on the other hand, provides what Marcus calls a “Swiss army knife” approach to functionality. “It allows a network operator to provision and manage IP-based voice and data services, with per-customer management of QoS and security, from a single platform,” he concludes. “Competitors in Europe have tried to position Huawei as a non-innovative, low-value, non-carrier class supplier, all charges it can fight with this new platform, which Huawei says it developed quickly based on feedback from European operators.”

All’s not sweetness and light for Huawei, of course. The company must battle skepticism from carrier network operators, for starters, and must also address lingering concerns about quality control.

“Although its reputation for quality is changing, this lingering caution helps fuel the perception of Huawei as unready for incumbent carrier networks in Europe, a perception that the company will have to continue to fight when going to market with the ME60 MSCG,” Marcus says.

This leaves Huawei vulnerable to FUD -- especially from entrenched players like Cisco, which enjoy stellar reputations (on the quality control front, at least) among most carrier-grade customers. “Cisco should highlight the fact that its 7600 and 10000 series platforms perform many of the same functions that the Huawei product provides, and that its products are proven solutions that have been delivering traffic in real life for some time. It can back that up with published reports that show it owns about half of the broadband aggregation market in terms of revenues,” Marcus comments. -Stephen Swoyer