LIVE FROM HUAWEI GLOBAL ANALYST SUMMIT 2015: Rotating CEO Eric Xu is on a mission to see Huawei boost its services proposition, noting that it is “not enough for Huawei to only be a products provider”.

“In the past, our strategy was driven by products, and services were supporting this. Moving forward, we want to move to [be] product driven, services driven,” he said at this morning’s event in Shenzen, China.

As far as its operator customers are concerned, Xu outlined a four-part plan: to become a “strategic partner for internetised operations transformation”; to become carriers’ prime systems integrator for ICT infrastructure transformation; to become a leader in customer experience management (CEM) and network planning and optimisation services; and to evolve managed services from being network-oriented to service- and performance-oriented.

And to enable this, the company will invest in open platforms and redefine enterprise architecture to support operation transformation; invest in NFV/SDN labs and consulting and systems integration; invest in technology for CEM and network planning and optimisation; and establish a service operations support organisation to “evolve managed services towards value creation”.

Xu said that Huawei plans to invest $350 million over three years in consulting and systems integration methodologies, tools and platforms for network and data centre transformation.

The increased importance of services has changed the way that Huawei views its customers.  “Huawei always said we were customer oriented. At that time, our customers were carriers and enterprises,” Xu said.

But this has now shifted “from the customers we directly engage with, to the user experience of the end users,” he continued, noting that the company has been “building deep insight into consumer behaviour” – aided by the activities of its own Consumer Business Group.