How China’s Telecom Giants Accelerate IT Efficiency with DevOps Maturity Models

Introduction

Amid digital transformation, enterprises adopt DevOps to improve IT efficiency. The “R&D Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” series, led by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), provides high‑value guidance for industry leaders.

Participating Telecom Companies

Six leading telecom operators—China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, ZTE, Huawei, and China Tower—have completed 31 assessments using the DevOps maturity model.

Assessment Overview

Statistics (as of 26 December 2022) show project counts for each company across continuous delivery (level 3), technical operation (level 2/2+), security & risk management (level 2), and system & tool evaluations. Data include both parent companies and subsidiaries.

Case Studies

Zhejiang Mobile – OSS 4.0 Capability Center

OSS 4.0 builds a centralized performance center based on data unification, capability sinking, open standards, and application integration. It supports unified data modeling, elastic scaling, and decoupled service governance, enabling rapid, reliable, cost‑effective operations.

The “4321” DevOps framework (four layers, three teams, two lines, one integration) drives continuous improvement across standards, tools, platforms, and processes.

Beijing Mobile – E‑commerce System & Centralized Performance Management

The e‑commerce system uses the self‑developed AiDo platform for visual metrics, pipeline orchestration, and layered automated testing, boosting development efficiency and delivery quality.

The performance management system adopts micro‑service decoupling, containerization, and a “thick middle‑platform, thin application” architecture, delivering shared data services and common technical components.

Jiangsu Mobile – Alading Marketing Enablement Project

After achieving continuous delivery level 3, the project reduced demand delivery time by 45 %, pre‑change time by 50 %, change failure rate below 5 %, average build time to ~5 minutes, and test automation coverage to 100 %.

China Unicom – One‑Card Recharge Project

Standardized interfaces across 31 provinces eliminated duplicate development, reduced software heterogeneity, and, combined with DevOps, significantly lowered management costs and improved development efficiency.

China Tower – Master Data Management Module

The module standardizes master data for organizations, personnel, regions, suppliers, customers, and assets, exposing 115 APIs, serving 46 internal systems, and managing ~30 GB of data.

Fujian Mobile – Multi‑Cloud Management Platform

The platform provides IAAS/PAAS provisioning, customer and product management, billing, and self‑service capabilities, aiming to automate service delivery, enhance security compliance, and support a seamless transition to multi‑cloud strategies.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The model, jointly created by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, and leading internet, finance, and telecom firms, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard in China and was adopted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

It covers process (agile management, continuous delivery, technical operation), application design, security & risk management, system & tools, business value management, collaborative development, and continuous testing.

Contact Information

For DevOps standard assessment inquiries, contact CAICT (Liu Kailin, phone 15650786171, email [email protected]) or the Efficient Operations Community (Wei Huanxin, phone 18500255645, email [email protected]).