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

In the context of large‑scale digital transformation, enterprises are adopting DevOps to boost IT efficiency. The "Research‑Operations Integrated (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series, led by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), provides high‑value guidance for this effort.

Participating Telecom Companies and Project Scope

Six major telecom operators—China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, ZTE, Huawei, and China Tower—have collectively evaluated 31 projects using the DevOps maturity model.

The evaluation covered continuous delivery (Level 3), technical operation (Level 2/2+), security & risk management (Level 2), and system & tool assessments.

Key Project Highlights

Zhejiang Mobile (OSS 4.0 Capability Center)

The OSS 4.0 platform centralizes performance data, supporting unified data ingestion, modeling, and computation, enabling faster, higher‑quality business analytics and decoupled application development.

During DevOps transformation, Zhejiang Mobile defined a "4321" DevOps framework (four layers, three teams, two lines, one integration) and a five‑step migration process.

Beijing Mobile (E‑commerce & Performance Management)

Beijing Mobile’s e‑commerce system, built on the self‑developed AiDo platform, combines visual metrics, pipeline orchestration, and layered automated testing to improve development efficiency and delivery quality.

The centralized performance management system adopts micro‑service decoupling and containerization, integrating GIS, UIUE, AI, and other common services via a "thick middle‑platform, thin application" approach.

Jiangsu Mobile (Aladdin Marketing Enablement)

After achieving Level 3 continuous delivery, the team reduced delivery cycle time by 45%, pre‑change time by 50%, change failure rate below 5%, average build time to ~5 minutes, test automation coverage to 100%, and enabled on‑demand release frequency.

China Unicom (One‑Card Recharge Project)

The project unified interfaces for 31 provinces, standardizing card‑management APIs, reducing redundant development, lowering software heterogeneity, and cutting software management costs while improving development efficiency.

Inner Mongolia Mobile (ESOP System)

The ESOP portal consolidates multiple business platforms (BBOSS, CRM, etc.) into a unified service, achieving a 25% reduction in delivery cycle, 50% reduction in version cycle, 300% increase in integration efficiency, and 95% test automation coverage.

China Tower (Master Data Management)

The master data management module now offers 115 APIs, serves 46 internal systems, stores ~30 GB of data, and supports end‑to‑end traceability and metric‑driven software production.

Model Overview

The DevOps Capability Maturity Model, jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, leading internet companies, and major financial and telecom enterprises, is the most comprehensive and authoritative DevOps standard in China. It has been officially released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and adopted by numerous leading firms.

In July 2020, the model was finalized by the ITU‑T, becoming the world’s first international DevOps standard. Its architecture spans agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operation, application design, security & risk management, system & tools, business value management, and collaborative development‑operation.