Digitization: Huawei to launch public cloud in South Africa

A leading global ICT solutions provider, Huawei, has concluded plans to build its Public Cloud in Johannesburg, South Africa to provide cloud services to all sub-Saharan African countries. A statement from the firm on Tuesday said the initiative was part of the company’s goal to accelerate its cloud business across the world. It added that […]

A leading global ICT solutions provider, Huawei, has concluded plans to build its Public Cloud in Johannesburg, South Africa to provide cloud services to all sub-Saharan African countries.

A statement from the firm on Tuesday said the initiative was part of the company’s goal to accelerate its cloud business across the world.

It added that the ICT giant will hold a launching ceremony on November 14 in Cape Town for its first African station expected to be based in Johannesburg.

“The company believes cloud services are essential for digitization of economies and has expressed commitment to providing open, flexible, easy-to-use and secure cloud services, laying a solid foundation for a fully connected, intelligent world by bringing digital to every person, home and organisation,” the statement noted.

Commenting on its globalisation strategy, Deng Tao, Vice President of Huawei Cloud BU said, “Huawei Cloud was globalised since its inception because Huawei had been providing its products and technologies in the form of cloud services to partners like Deutsche Telekom (Germany), Orange (France), Telefonica (Spain) and China Telecom.

“Based on Huawei’s 30 years of ICT infrastructure experience and nearly 10 years of continuous R&D in cloud computing technologies, Huawei Cloud can provide a one-stop solution to large enterprises; addressing their challenges in digital and cloud transformation, as well as to small and medium-sized companies that aim to expand their business.”

 

Providing cloud computing in the global age

Since it was established in March 2017, the Huawei Cloud Business Unit (BU) has unveiled more than 120 cloud services in 18 major categories.

These cover more than 60 general solutions including SAP, high-performance computing (HPC), Internet of Things (IoT), Security, DevOps and more than 80 industry scenario solutions; covering manufacturing, e-commerce, gaming, finance and Internet of Vehicles (IoV), according to the statement.

In 2018, Huawei Cloud officially launched the Hong Kong, Russia and Thailand Stations. By end of September 2018, Huawei Cloud had provided services in Asia Pacific and partner public cloud services in Europe and Latin America, outside of the Chinese market.

Huawei Cloud and Huawei partner public cloud are available in 14 countries and regions, and will be available in most of major the regions around the world by end of 2018, the firm said.

 

From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Enterprise Intelligence (EI)

This November, Huawei launched its comprehensive Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy and full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio which is designed to provide powerful support for Huawei Cloud EI (Enterprise Intelligence).

It will be recalled that an AI service platform for enterprises and governments, was released in September 2017.

To turn AI into a practical reality, Huawei comes up with the concept of EI, saying “a cloud will prosper only when it helps customers create value on an ongoing basis.”

Also commenting on how to combine industry insight with AI, Jia Yongli; General Manager of EI Product Department of Huawei Cloud BU said, “Huawei Cloud EI is a scenarios-based service. Huawei Cloud EI drives industry modernisation in three scenarios, including repetitive and high-volume work, tasks that require expert experience and work that needs multi-domain collaboration.

“These will help improve efficiency, pass on expertise, and break the limits of human intelligence.”

It will be recalled that on April 17, 2018, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the world’s top open source community in cloud technology, officially announced Huawei election to the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), making Huawei the first Asian company to be admitted into the CNCF TOC.

Similarly in May 2018, Huawei Cloud became an SAP-certified platform for deploying SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver.

“The needs of enterprises in business development have become more complex and diverse, as they need not only to develop new applications on public clouds but also migrate some of their traditional services to public clouds, while continuing to provide support for these services.

“Huawei Cloud is committed to working with partners to build sustainable partnerships that can lead to an open ecosystem to better meet customers’ needs,” the statement read.